(Xinhua) -- Jordan's State Security Court has decided to uphold the death sentence it delivered over a year ago against an alleged top aide to late al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a court source said Wednesday. The 25-year-old Iraqi suspect, Ziad Khalaf Raja al-Karbouly, was convicted guilty for plotting attacks on Jordanians, including killing a truck driver on the highway between Iraq and Jordan, said the source. Wednesday's guilty verdict can be appealed, said the court.
The court had sentenced al-Karbouly to death in March 2007 but the verdict was overturned by an appeal court since judges initially rejected his application for mental checks. State doctors later conducted psychiatric tests to al-Karbouly and concluded that he was mentally sound, paving the way for his retrial.
Al-Karbouly was arrested by Jordanian intelligence agents in May 2006. He claimed that he was a member of the terrorist group al-Qaida in Iraq, which was later denied by the group in a statement. He also admitted that he had abducted two Moroccans with Moroccan embassy in Baghdad and killed a Jordanian trucker but later denied it in the first trial.