AMMAN, 3 April 2007 — Jordan’s State Security Court yesterday sentenced five Arabs to life imprisonment after finding them guilty of plotting to bomb a hotel at Queen Alia International Airport, 30 kilometers south of Amman, according to judicial sources.
The five — three Iraqis, a Libyan and a Saudi — were also charged with targeting hotels at the Dead Sea resort, usually frequented by US and Israeli nationals, the sources said. Two of the condemned defendants were present in the courtroom while the other three were sentenced in absentia.
The detained suspects are Iraqi Saad Nuaimi, 40, and Libyan Mohammad Al-Darsi, 23. The tribunal sentenced a detained Iraq national — Mohsen Al-Weisi, to 15 years in jail. All three were detained in 2005 before carrying out their attacks.
A Saudi citizen, Turki Nasser Abdullah, and two Iraqis — Yousuf Al-Obeidi and Saad Al-Obeidi — were sentenced to life jail terms in absentia. The SSC acquitted a sixth Iraqi national “for lack of evidence,” the judicial sources said.
According to the indictment statement, all seven people were charged with “unlicensed possession of explosives and arms for illegal use and planning acts of terrorism.” The verdicts are can be appealed before the Court of Cassation within 30 days, judicial sources said.
The four defendants in court were arrested in March last year when the authorities seized explosives of the kind used in suicide attacks on Amman hotels that killed 60 people the previous November.
