Jordan sentences man to death for killing drug agents

AMMAN: A Jordanian court sentenced a citizen to death on Sunday after he was convicted of killing three drug enforcement agents during a raid earlier this year.
The Jordanian state security court said, in a statement, that it “unanimously issued its final ruling on Sunday in the case concerning the martyrdom of three members of the anti-narcotics administration.”
It said the accused was found guilty of charges including “physically assaulting officials charged with enforcing the narcotics law, resulting in death... and consequently sentenced him to the most severe punishment, which is the death penalty.”
Jordan still sentences people to death, but there has been an effective moratorium on capital punishment for years.
The last executions in the kingdom were in 2017, when 15 people were hanged, 10 of them over terror-related charges.
The case dates back to March 18, when three members of the anti-narcotics unit were killed and a fourth was wounded during a raid that resulted in the arrest of the suspect and the seizure of weapons and drugs, according to the Jordanian public security directorate.
Jordanian authorities regularly announce the seizure and destruction of drug shipments, with 85 percent of the drugs seized intended for smuggling out of the kingdom.
Last year, authorities arrested more than 38,000 people in over 25,000 cases related to drug use, smuggling and trafficking.
Similarly, the Jordanian military regularly announces that it has thwarted drug smuggling operations across the long, porous border with Syria, particularly involving captagon pills.
Production and smuggling of the amphetamine-like narcotic were rife during the rule of ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad, following the outbreak of the civil war there in 2011.

Jordan sentences man to death for killing drug agents