AMMAN, 12 March 2006 — Two men, a Libyan and a Jordanian, were hanged yesterday after the State Security Court (SSC) sentenced them to death for killing a US diplomat in October 2002, according to an official statement.
“Two criminals — Salem Saad Salem Bin Suwaid, a Libyan, and Yasser Tathi Ibrahim Fraihat, a Jordanian — were hanged at dawn Saturday at the Suwaqa prison”, some 50 km south of Amman, the statement said.
The two men were sentenced to death by the security court, which found them guilty of killing American diplomat Laurence Foley at the backyard of his house in West Amman in October 2002. The sentences were passed in 2004. In the same case, the court also passed the death sentence in absentia on Jordanian fugitive Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi, who the US military says leads an insurgency in neighboring Iraq, was charged with masterminding Foley’s assassination.
Earlier this month rioting broke out in three major Jordanian prisons after security forces went into Suwaqa to transfer the two high-profile prisoners on death row for killing Foley. The prison clashes, which involved 150 inmates, were the most serious in Jordan in recent years. A Jordanian security source said anti-riot police and prison authorities were put on high alert in the prisons in anticipation of unrest by angry inmates. Prisoners had threatened to riot if the two inmates were taken for execution.
Islamists in contact with security detainees said inmates were threatening to stage “unspecified action” to show their anger against the hanging of the two militants.
This month’s rioting underscored the Islamists’ high-level of coordination. Security sources said the inmates used smuggled mobile phones to organize the rioting in the three jails.
