AMMAN, 6 November 2007 — Jordan’s State Security Court (SSC) yesterday sentenced to death a Jordanian after condemning him for his role in exploding the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad in 2003, judicial sources said.
The tribunal passed the death sentence on Mohammad Jaghbir, 37, after finding him guilty of “plotting to carry out an act of terrorism that resulted in the death of a human being,” the sources added.
At least 14 people were killed in the blast that rocked the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad in August 2003. Iraq’s Al-Qaeda branch, then led by the slain Jordanian fugitive Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the bombing. According to the Jordanian penal code, the verdict can be appealed before the Court of Cassation within 30 days.
Jaghbir, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, was arrested in 2005 upon his return from Iraq and charged with the embassy attack. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was then headed by Jordanian-born Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the attack. The court dropped charges against Zarqawi yesterday, citing his death in a US airstrike in Iraq in June 2006.
Sporting a long beard and a navy blue prison uniform, Jaghbir seemed aloof as the military judges read his verdict. Fathi Al-Daradkeh, Jaghbir’s lawyer, said his client would appeal the ruling. Military prosecutors said at the outset of the trial in February 2005 that Jaghbir had confessed to his involvement in the suicide bombing. But the defendant claimed his guilty confession was extracted from him under torture and duress.
In a testimony to the court, Jaghbir said he was in the Iraqi city of Mosul when the attack occurred and that he learned about the bombing during questioning by Iraqi and American officials in Iraq. Jaghbir is also on trial in the same military court in a separate case involving a 2002 Al-Qaeda-linked attack that killed US aid worker Laurence Foley, who was gunned down outside his home in Amman. The assassination plot was also blamed on Zarqawi.
