AMMAN/RAMALLAH, 6 July 2007 — Four Jordanians jailed in Israel returned home yesterday after what the Jordanian government described as an “understanding” reached with the Israeli government for allowing the four men to serve the rest of their sentences at Jordanian prisons.
The four prisoners — Sultan Ajlouni, Khalid Abu Ghalioun, Amin Sane and Salem Abu Ghalioun — were handed over to the Jordanian authorities at the Sheikh Hussein Bridge crossing point, 130 kilometers north of Amman, eyewitnesses said. Tens of relatives gathered outside the site to welcome the prisoners, whom they were allowed to visit only twice since 1990, when the four men were detained and condemned to life imprisonment by an Israeli court after it found them guilty of killing two Israeli soldiers.
The four Jordanians infiltrated through the Jordan Valley to the West Bank where they ambushed an Israeli patrol. The Israeli Cabinet decided on Sunday to transfer the four Jordanians to Jordan for serving their remaining jail periods at Jordanian jails as a gesture of good will toward the Hashemite Kingdom.
“The Jordanian and Israeli governments have reached an understanding that provides for the return home of four Jordanians who were arrested by Israel before the signing of the peace treaty between the two countries,” the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said in a statement yesterday.
The four burst into tears of joy as they were reunited with relatives at the Sheikh Hussein border crossing. Jordanian officials refused to give details on their whereabouts, but sources close to the families said they would be hospitalized at the King Hussein Medical Center in the capital.
“The prisoners were taken by the Jordanian authorities to an undisclosed location,” a relative of one of the men told reporters. The men, who had been serving their time in a jail near the Israeli resort of Netanya, underwent medical examinations before their families and Jordanian officials greeted them. A committee representing Jordan’s Islamist-dominated trade unions, which is in charge of monitoring the conditions of Jordanian prisoners in Israel, urged the government to release the four. “They fought the Zionist entity. They are heroes and should not be jailed,” a committee statement said.
For its part, Jordan’s opposition Islamic Action Front (IAF) “strongly condemned” the government plans to jail the prisoners. “The government’s move violates national laws, harms Jordan’s sovereignty and deeply hurts the feelings of Jordanians because the four men are heroes, who defended the country,” said the influential party, which is the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“They deserve an honorable welcome instead of throwing them in jail, on orders by the Zionist enemy that seeks to kill the nation’s spirit of resistance,” the IAF, which has 17 seats in the 110-member lower house of Parliament, said in a statement calling for their swift release.
