AMMAN, 19 October 2006 — A Jordanian military judge convicted eight Islamic militants yesterday of plotting to kill US troops in Iraq and Americans and Israelis in Jordan.
“You are the enemy and a tyrant!” the militants yelled from the dock as the presiding judge read out the verdict. “We are all fighters for God and Islam’s victory!” the defendants screamed, who wore long beards, dark blue prison uniforms and ankle chains. The judge, whose name cannot be published for security reasons, handed down sentences of between two and 10 years’ imprisonment to the eight defendants, who were all Jordanians.
The alleged mastermind of the plot, Ahmad Shabaneh, 37, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. Two other defendants, who were convicted in absentia as they are at large, received the same sentence.
In another development, a Jordanian gunman accused of the murder of a Briton in an attack in Amman last month on Western holidaymakers pleaded innocent yesterday at the opening of his trial. “I am not guilty of all the charges. I did not shoot the policeman,” Nabil Ahmad Issa Jaaoura told the presiding judge at the state security court, a military tribunal, where he faces the death penalty for the attack.
But Jaaoura admitted he used an unlicensed handgun to attack tourists at a Roman amphitheater in Amman in September, killing a Briton and wounding five other holidaymakers and their Jordanian police escort.
