Islamic activists sentenced to death in Jordan to please US and Israel

Jordan’s state security court passed death-sentences on six Islamic activists on September 18, after a four-month trial clearly inspired, and closely watched, by the US and Israel.

The six, four of whom are still free and were tried in absentia, were among 28 activists prosecuted on charges including possession of weapons and explosives, membership of Sheikh Usama bin Laden’s Qaedah group, and plotting attacks on US and Israeli targets during millennium celebrations last December. The death sentences passed on two other activists by the same court were later commuted to life imprisonment. The three-man tribunal also sentenced 16 activists to prison terms ranging from seven years to life, and acquitted six of the defendants, including a 17-year-old boy, for lack of evidence.

Twelve of the 28 men charged were tried in absentia, and the 16 who attended the trial denied all the charges. They were defiant when the presiding judge, Lt-Col Tayel al-Raqad, read out their death-sentences, shouting "Allahu Akbar" from the dock. 25-year-old Saed Hejazi went even further, shouting "you are the criminals", as the court commuted his death-sentence to life-imprisonment.

The defendants’ lawyers reacted angrily to the court’s verdicts, arguing that they were politically motivated. Jawad Younis, one of the lawyers, said: "There is a political background behind these sentences. It is to serve the Americans and to prove that Jordan is pursuing what they call terrorists." The lawyers had good reason to be furious: expert witnesses presented for the defence had testified that the acid, gunpowder and two-way radios seized from their defendants were so unsuitable for making bombs that it was absurd to claim — as the prosecution had done — that they had planned to bomb US and Israeli targets; but the court totally ignored their testimony.

The story that the defendants were planning to bomb religious sites (for instance, Mount Nebo, from where Moses is said to have viewed the promised land), which Israeli and American tourists were expected to visit during the millennium celebrations, had been planted by Jordanian intelligence agents and agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). They also concocted the story that the defendants were linked to Sheikh bin Laden and had been smuggling arms to Jordan for the last four years.

The bin Laden connection is a transparent but absurd attempt to explain how 28 men living in different countries, and with no links to the major Palestinian jihad groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad — although most of them are Palestinians holding Jordanian citizenship — could possibly have planned military attacks against Israeli and military targets in Palestine or Jordan. But just in case the Qaedah group connection turned out to be an insufficient explanation for the defendants’ financial weight, the outrageous allegation was fabricated that they had resorted to fraud and theft to secure the funds they needed for their operations.

The hapless prosecutor of the state security court, Mahmoud Obeidat, who was forced to take these preposterous allegations on board, had to transform them into legal charges and to introduce in court the necessary evidence to back them. Thus he accused Omar Abu Omar, a Jordanian living in Britain (also known as Abu Kutaida), of taking part in funding the group, and Zen al-Abideen Hassan (Abu Zubaydah) — a Palestinian living in Pakistan — of providing the group’s links with bin Laden and his Qaedah organization. The logic behind this charge is that someone living in Pakistan has greater access to Afghanistan, where bin Laden is hiding, than someone living in Europe or Jordan. But to accomplish his impossible mission, the prosecutor had to find a widely known activist who could be presented as a credible terrorist. He chose Munir Maqdah, a military official of al-Fatah, Yasser Arafat’s faction in the PLO, for the celebrity role, charging him with smuggling arms to Jordan. Maqdah, who lives in a Palestinian refugee-camp in southern Lebanon, is not allowed into Jordan or Israel.

Just as pathetic as the charges filed by the prosecutor were the items introduced as evidence to substantiate the claim that the accused were engaged in manufacturing bombs. The substances and gadgets (acid, gunpowder and two-way radios) seized from them were manifestly too insubstantial to support the charges. Yet the prosecutor felt able to urge the court to "impose the harshest sentences" because of "the dangerous crimes and their effects on the country’s economy." The court lost no time in obliging him.

Thus the tribunal sentenced Munir Maqdah to death in absentia for the alleged smuggling of arms to Jordan, while imposing a 15-year prison sentence in absentia on Omar Abu Omar for his alleged role in funding the group. The three judges also sentenced Zen al-Abideen Hassan (in Pakistan) to death in absentia. All three men have denied any involvement and links with bin Laden, but Maqdah has said in a newspaper interview that both the charge and the sentence are a source of pride and honour for him.

Clearly Jawad Younis, one of the defendants’ lawyers, is right to attribute to the sentences the dual political purpose of serving thatAmericans and proving the "Jordan is pursuing what they call terrorists." The sentences are designed to support the US strategic claim that there is a global terrorist organisation linked to bin Laden, which is targeting global strategic interests. They are also designed to show that Jordan is performing its duties under international counter-terrorism treaties imposed on Muslim countries, which commits them to combatting Islamic resistance to US and zionist crimes against Muslims. The pact also requires Jordan to share intelligence information with other signatories: Israel, Egypt, Arafat’s Palestinian Authority and the US.

The sentences are the latest example of Amman’s zeal to serve the dual purposes described by Younis. A year ago, Jordan expelled four Hamas leaders to Qatar, and still refuses to readmit them because of the high praise it received from Washington and Tel Aviv. This outrageous trial is unlikely to be the last time that Amman jumps to please the US and Israel. Like other Arab rulers, Jordan’s king Abdullah knows that his position is dependent on their pleasure, and that he cannot afford to anger either.