AMMAN, 14 September 2006 — Jordan’s State Security Court (SSC) yesterday sentenced 10 Islamists to jail terms ranging between 10 and 21 years after finding them guilty of planning acts of terrorism inside the country. The 10 defendants belonged to two terror cells that plotted to carry out attacks on barracks for training Iraqi policemen and liquor shops frequented by Americans, the court heard.
In the first case, the court sentenced four Jordanians to jail terms ranging between 10 and 21 years with hard labor after finding them guilty of planning acts of terrorism, judicial sources said. Initially, the tribunal passed the death penalty on Maath Braizat, Ibrahim Jahawsheh and Faisal Rwaidan, but decided to commute them to 20 years in jail “to give them a chance to rectify themselves.” Braizat received an additional one-year imprisonment because the court found him guilty of possessing a firearm without license, the judicial sources said. A fourth defendant, Obadeh Hiyari, was sentenced to ten years.
All four defendants, who were arrested earlier this year, were sentenced for plotting to carry out attacks on a barracks for training Iraqi policemen at Muwaqqar, 50 kilometers east of Amman. The Jordanian government concluded an agreement with the Iraqi authorities two years ago to train 32,000 Iraqi policemen.
In the second case, the court sentenced six people, four Jordanians and two Palestinians, to jail terms ranging between 10 and 15 years after condemning them on charges of planning attacks on liquor shops and hotels frequented by US citizens.
Two of the defendants are Palestinians who are still at large and have been tried in absentia, the judicial sources said. The six people, who formed a group they named “the Khattab Battalions,” were indicted in January, they added. All verdicts can be appealed before the Court of Cassation, the sources said.
Military judges said the prosecution’s allegations were “substantiated with strong evidence, and the court is convinced beyond doubt that the four were involved in a terror conspiracy on Jordanian soil.” The court initially sentenced three of the four defendants to death by hanging but quickly commuted their sentences to 20 years with hard labor, saying it wanted to give the men another chance to repent.
Upon hearing the verdict, the four men — all wearing dark blue prison uniforms and sporting long beards - shouted the battle cry of “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is Greatest.” “God won’t ignore tyrants, you criminals and enemies of Allah,” shouted the group’s alleged mastermind, Braizat, 19.
The prosecution indictment claimed that Braizat, Hiyari and the other two defendants monitored a desert road to the US-run training facility. They saw that the Americans routinely were driven to the facility in unguarded tourist cars and used the same route everyday, according to the indictment.
