AMMAN, 11 July 2006 — Jordan’s prosecutor general has suspended the board running the Muslim Brotherhood’s main charity ahead of taking over control of the financial arm of the country’s largest opposition party, officials said yesterday. The move comes after a Cabinet decision last Wednesday to refer the Islamic Charity Society to the public prosecutor to start an investigation into alleged financial irregularities.
The government minister in charge of supervising private charities, Suleiman Tarawneh, told the state news agency Petra the central bank has “revoked the authorizations of the board in any financial transaction and a new temporary executive board would be appointed in the next few days to run the charity.”
A decision to close the charity would mark the toughest crackdown on the Islamist movement, the kingdom’s largest opposition group, since the government got tough over the Muslim Brotherhood’s stance against a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. The charity, which runs a wide network of welfare centers across the country with more than $1 billion worth of assets, is seen by officials as the financial arm of the Islamists. It dispenses millions of dollars of aid to needy Jordanians that officials says is behind the influence of the Islamists.
Much of the Islamist’s popularity has stemmed from its provision of services funded through charities as well as its opposition to peace with Israel and a vocal criticism of government corruption. The Islamist Action Front, the Brotherhood’s political arm with 17 deputies in the 110-member assembly, has called for sweeping political reforms, including an elected government and changes in an electoral law that works against their chances of gaining political control.
Meanwhile, an opinion poll published yesterday showed that Jordanians are split over the death of Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was killed on June 7 in a US airstrike. The survey, which was conducted by the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies, also revealed that a majority of Jordanians classify the ruling Palestinian Hamas group and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militias as legitimate resistance organizations, while they regard Al-Qaeda as a terrorist group.
The results of the poll, conducted on a national sample and a public opinion leaders sample, were published by local newspapers. A majority of citizens polled viewed the death of the Jordan-born Zarqawi as a positive development because they considered him a terrorist responsible for the November triple hotel bombings in Amman and viewed his absence as conducive to more stability and security in Jordan.
