 In a retrial on Wednesday, the State Security Court (SSC) sentenced three men, including Mohammad Shalabi better known as Abu Sayyaf, to prison terms ranging from seven to 15 years for plotting to launch an attack against American interests in Jordan. The tribunal handed Shalabi a 15-year prison term for complicity in possessing explosives with illicit intent. Amer Sraj was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment on the same charge, but the court decided to reduce it to 10 years because of the circumstances of the case and to give the defendant a second chance in life. The third defendant, Saleh Awad, also received a 15-year prison term, which was immediately commuted to half by the tribunal to give the defendant a second chance in life. Eleven people were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to 15 years for possessing explosives with illicit intent during the original trial in December 2004.
The Cassation Court upheld the sentences of eight of the defendants and overturned the verdicts of three, whose retrial was held yesterday. Shalabi was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison, Awad to 12 years and Sraj to 10 years. The higher court overturned their verdicts in July 2006, stating that the charge of possessing explosives should be further examined by the SSC.
On Wednesday, the SSC decided to amend the charge to complicity in possessing explosives with illicit intent and handed some of them new sentences. The verdict will automatically be reviewed by a higher court within the next 30 days. The prosecution had charged the defendants with possessing 40 handgrenades and detonators with the intent of using them in military operations against Americans, as well as planning to go to Afghanistan for jihad following the September 11 attacks against the US. The defendants changed their plans, however, and decided instead to launch military operations in Jordan against Americans, in particular the US embassy in Amman, according to the charge sheet. Their targets also included General Intelligence Department officers, the charge sheet added. But the authorities apprehended the defendants before they carried out any of their alleged plans.
The government has also blamed Shalabi for causing the Maan riots last year, which claimed the lives of five people. He was sentenced to death by the SSC in 2006 for possessing automatic machineguns with illicit intent in the Maan riots case.
In a second high-profile case yesterday, the SSC postponed the trial of Ziyad Khalaf Karbouli, who is accused of murdering a Jordanian citizen in Iraq in 2005, to allow his attorney more time to seek a letter from an Iraqi police station indicating his client was in detention at the time of the murder. Last week, lawyer Adel Tarawneh told the court he received an e-mail from Karboulis father that included a letter from Akashat Police Station in Iraq stating that his client was in custody from September 21 to 24 for not possessing an identification card, the same time the Jordanian driver was reportedly murdered. The lawyer told the court yesterday he still had not receive an official copy of the letter to submit as evidence and needed more time. The tribunal agreed and adjourned the session until next Wednesday.
Karbouli, 32, appeared on Jordan Television in May 2006 and confessed to shooting Khaled Dasouqi, a driver who worked on the Baghdad-Amman highway, and kidnapping two Moroccan diplomats in Iraq last year. Karbouli and 13 others, who are being tried in absentia, are charged with plotting subversive acts that led to the death of an individual, possessing explosives with illicit intent and belonging to an illegal organisation (Tawhid and Jihad) affiliated to Al Qaeda network in Iraq. |
The lawyer for an Iraqi man on trial for the murder of a Jordanian driver in Iraq in 2005 on Wednesday told the State Security Court (SSC) that his client confessed to the crime after authorities threatened him with transfer to the US-run prison at Guantánamo Bay. My client is innocent of all charges and he made the confessions on Jordan TV after being threatened by the Jordanian authorities to be sent to the Guantánamo Bay detention centre if he did not confess to killing Jordanian driver Khaled Dasouqi, Lawyer Adel Tarawneh told the court in his 17-page closing statement.
AN Iraqi member of al-Qaeda confessed on Jordanian television today to killing a Jordanian driver by shooting him in the head and to kidnapping two Moroccan embassy employees last year. 