AMMAN, 22 September 2006 — Jordan’s State Security Court (SSC) yesterday imposed the death penalty on seven people after finding them guilty of involvement in the November Amman hotel bombings, judicial sources said.
Those sentenced to death are Iraqi woman Sajeda Al-Rishawi, who was the only defendant present in the court, and six other suspects who are at large and have been tried in absentia. They are one Jordanian and five Iraqis.
The tribunal decided to close the caseon the eighth defendant, the Jordan-born arch terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi because he was killed in a US airstrike inside Iraq on June 7, judicial sources said.
Before his death, Al-Zarqawi led the Al-Qaeda-affiliated group, Jihad and Tawhid Birgades, which claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings at three Amman hotels on Nov. 9, 2005 that killed 60 people and wounded more than 90.
Rishawi, 39, was arrested three days after the blasts and confessed on state-run Jordan television to have been part of the suicide gang. The gang also included three men who blew themselves up at the three five-star hotels. One of the suicide bombers was Al-Rishawi’s husband.
She claimed that her explosive belt failed to detonate at a wedding party that was in process at Radisson SAS, one of the targeted hotels. The verdicts can be appealed before the Court of Cassation, judicial sources said.
Rishawi, from the western Iraqi town of Ramadi, wore a Muslim head scarf and a blue prison gown in court and showed little emotion when the sentence was passed.
“She expected either the death sentence or to be sent back to Iraq,” said her lawyer Hussein Al-Masri, who said she had not helped him gather information to help her defense.
“She refused to give me her family address in Iraq because she did not want them to be harmed. So neither her family nor the party that sent her helped us present any evidence that might help her case.” Masri added that he would appeal against the verdict.
Jordanian officials identified her as a sister of Samir Mubarak Atrous Al-Rishawi, a former Zarqawi aide who was killed by US forces in Iraq. The lawyer said Rishawi, who told the court she had married her husband Ali Hussein Al-Shimeri a day before coming to Jordan, knew about the bomb plot only when her husband forced her to wear the suicide belt hours before the attack.
