AMMAN, 11 May 2006 — The Jordanian security forces have arrested 20 Hamas activists in connection with arms smuggling charges, the government’s spokesman Nasser Judeh announced yesterday. He told a press conference that the investigations had revealed that the Hamas men “tried to recruit volunteers from the Palestinian territories to receive military training in Syria and Iran”.
He said part of the arms smuggled included weapons made in Iran. “We have discovered new caches of arms and we are searching for others,” he added. Judeh made the revelation as a Palestinian intelligence team met with Jordanian officials to discuss evidence about the involvement of Hamas elements in the arms smuggling operation.
The 6-member Palestinian team is led by the Palestinian Intelligence Chief Tareq Abu Rajab and does not include any representatives for the Hamas-led government. “We will present the Palestinian delegation with categorical evidence about the involvement of Hamas elements in the smuggling of arms, storing them and trying to target civil and military officials in Jordan,” Judeh said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the Jordanian government earlier this week that the Hamas-led government was “unwilling” to take part in the political-security Palestinian team which arrived earlier yesterday to take part in the wide-ranging probe into the arms smuggling accusations. However, the Hamas government, which categorically denied the original charges announce by the Jordanian authorities at the end of April, said that such talks should be “conducted directly between the Jordanian government and the exiled Hamas leadership”.
The senior Palestinian diplomat in Jordan, Atta Khairy, said Abu Rajab was briefed on the facts and “shown evidence on the arms smuggling allegedly by Hamas activists.” Hamas officials, along with the Syrian government — which hosts Hamas’ exiled leadership — have denied the allegations since the cache’s discovery three weeks ago.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi alleged would-be female suicide bomber standing trial over deadly hotel attacks in Jordan last year yesterday told her court-appointed lawyer she was not guilty. “Sajida Al-Rishawi told me she was not guilty,” attorney Hussein Al-Masri told AFP after meeting his client in prison, one day after he was assigned to defend her by Jordan’s State Security Court.
Rishawi was arrested four days after the Nov. 9 bombings killed 60 people and later confessed on state television how she tried but failed to activate an explosives belt at one of the three Amman hotels targeted.
