Middle East News
Jordan indicts 10 Islamists on terrorism charges
Jan 1, 2010, 10:40 GMT
Amman - The prosecutor of Jordan's State Security Court has charged 10 Islamists with plotting to carry out acts of terrorism inside the country, judicial sources said on Friday.
According to the indictment, the defendants planned to carry out attacks which included attempts to kidnap intelligence personnel to trade them for Sajeda al-Rishawi, an Iraqi woman who was condemned to death for taking part in the Amman hotel suicide bombings that killed 60 people in 2005.
All 10 accused are adherents to the takfir ideology, the sources added.
Al-Rishawi was accompanied by two Iraqi suicide bombers who blew themselves up at five-star hotels in Amman - but she failed to detonate her explosive belt at a wedding party at one of the hotels.
All three belonged to the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda terrorist organization which was then led by the Jordanian fugitive Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi - killed in a US airstrike inside Iraq in 2006.
The suspects also planned attacks on tankers carrying fuel to Jordanian army barracks and US troops which they alleged were stationed near the Jordanian border with Iraq, judicial sources said.
The defendants, all of them were arrested in November, succeeded in setting an alcohol shop ablaze in the city of Zarqa, 20 kilometres east of Amman, and planned similar attacks on bars in Zarqa and Amman.
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