AMMAN, 18 July 2006 — Mohammed Abu Fares, a Jordanian MP being detained over remarks made to the family of deceased terrorist leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, has been hospitalized after his health deteriorated, a statement from his party said yesterday.
Fares was brought to hospital from the desert prison of Jafr, 250 kilometers south of Amman where he was being held, the Islamic Action Front (IAF) said in a statement. The IAF said it held the government “completely responsible” for the safety of the deputy, who was reportedly admitted to the intensive care unit at Maan hospital, and called for Abu Fares and all other political prisoners in Jordan to be released.
Abu Fares and three other IAF lawmakers were arrested on June 11 after they extended condolences to the family of Zarqawi, the slain Jordan-born leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed in a US airstrike on June 7. One of the four MPs, Ibrahim Mashwakhi, was released last week, but the prosecutor-general has decided to go ahead with judicial proceedings against the three others on charges of “incitement and endangering national unity.”
Abu Fares went as far as to praise Zarqawi as a “martyr,” a remark that angered the families of 60 people who were killed in the Nov. 9, 2005 triple hotel bombings in Amman that were claimed by Zarqawi’s terrorist group.
The IAF has accused the government of pursing a “stubborn and repressive policy” by its continued detention of the three deputies.
