The men were led by Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin widely known as a jihad theorist and former mentor of the Jordanian terrorist Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, leader of the Al-Qaeda branch in Iraq who was killed in a US airstrike in 2006.
The other two suspects appearing before the court were Iyad Qunnaibi, a professor at the Balqla University of Applied Sciences, and Ayman Ayyoub. The three defendants were arrested in September.
A fourth member of the network — Bahabuddine Othman — is still at large and is being tried in absentia, the sources said.
The four men are accused of “recruiting people inside Jordan to join terrorist groups and carry out acts not approved by the government that could jeopardize Jordan’s ties with foreign countries,” according to the indictment statement.
The SSC decided to adjourn the hearings until Jan. 30 for hearing witnesses supportive of the charges.
Al-Maqdisi, the assumed name of Issam Tahir Al-Barqawi, 50, was condemned and jailed in the late 1990’s for his extremist thoughts and was released in 1999 in a royal amnesty.
Since then he is reported to have written articles and delivered lectures that focus on the takfeer ideology (dubbing people as atheists).
