AMMAN, 15 August 2003 — Thirteen people, including three Saudis, were charged with plotting to carry out “terrorist acts” against US troops involved in joint military exercises with the Jordanian Army, judicial sources said yesterday.
One of the men charged by the public prosecutor of the Jordanian State Security Court is a cousin of Ahmad Fadel Khalayleh, better known as “Abu Musaab Zarqawi”, a Jordanian believed to be affiliated with the Al-Qaeda terror network. Zarqawi, who fled the country several years ago, has been cited as one of the possible masterminds behind the explosion at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad earlier this month. He has also been charged by the Jordanian authorities with being behind the assassination of American diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman on Oct. 28.
The network was broken up by the Jordanian General Intelligence Department at the end of last year while its members were plotting to carry out “acts of terrorism” against US troops taking part in drills with Jordanian armed forces in the eastern desert near the border with Iraq, the sources said.
The three Saudis, who are still at large, moved between Jordan and Saudi Arabia “to recruit people to attack US troops wherever they existed”, according to the charges list.
The defendants confessed to having set up the network after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and the launching of the anti-terror campaign in Afghanistan.
“At the start they wanted to go to Afghanistan to perform Jihad (holy war) against the Americans, but when they failed they decided to implement their plot in Jordan by using hand grenades, automatic weapons and RPG shells,” the judicial sources said.
No date has yet been set for the defendants’ trial.
