AMMAN, 20 June 2006 — Islamist MPs who offered their condolences to the family of slain Al-Qaeda militant Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi are “misguided,” Jordan’s King Abdallah said yesterday. “There are some elements in our society who are misguided individuals,” the king said in an interview with a German news magazine, according to a transcript provided by the royal court. “Zarqawi was a mass murderer, not only killing innocent people in Jordan, but also in Iraq and elsewhere. I cannot fathom how some people can make this man a hero,” he said.
Jordan has arrested four MPs from the opposition Islamic Action Front party who visited Zarqawi’s family home north of Amman on June 9, two days after he was killed in Iraq in a US air raid. The deputies were charged with inciting sectarianism and face prosecution, after families of victims killed in November hotel bombings claimed by Zarqawi lodged formal complaints over the visit.
One of the MPs is said to have described Zarqawi as a “martyr,” triggering nationwide condemnation in Jordan. “I don’t think there should be any tolerance for people who incite and support terrorism in any form,” the Jordanian monarch said when asked if the four MPs trespassed a red line. “If people are actively supporting and encouraging terrorism, then they’re on the other side of the fence,” he said. Jordanians “have to agree on zero-tolerance to terrorism,” he added.
He also said that “overwhelming majority” of Jordan’s Islamic movement, namely the Muslim Brotherhood and the IAF which is its political branch with 17 MPs in the 110-seat Parliament, “are moderate, peace-loving people.” Asked if he was planning on redefining his relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, King Abdullah said: “They have to redefine their relationship with us.” “They have been working in the grey area for the past decades,” he said. “I believe that the majority of the Brotherhood wants a good future for this country, and a good future for their children. I think that we can all work as a team.”
Earlier, the government rebuked Human Rights Watch for criticizing Amman over the detention of four Islamist lawmakers. “The HRW should apologize to the Jordanian people and the families of the victims who were killed in the Amman hotel bombings,” the government’s official spokesman Nasser Judeh told a weekly media briefing. “The HRW report involves an offence to many Jordanians,” he added.
The HRW’s Middle East and North African Division said in its report this week that the “expression of condolences to the family of a dead man, however murderous he might be, is no crime”. The four deputies, who belong to the Islamic Action Front, Jordan’s largest political party, visited a tent that was set up by Al-Zarqawi’s family in his home city of Zarqa, 30 kilometers east of Amman, for offering condolences.
