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Jordan charges 17 in connection with chemical attack
Jordan will bring official charges this week against 17 militants suspected of links to al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in connection with a plot to launch a massive chemical attack, security sources said Sunday. They said the state security court was expected in the next few days to lay out the case against ring leader Azmi Jayousi and sixteen other militants, including six Syrians. The 17 include four militants killed in clashes with the security forces before the plot was thwarted in April. Nine of the suspects are in police custody and four will be tried in absentia, including Zarqawi himself. "The charge list will be sent very soon to the military prosecutor to be formally issued against the defendants," one security source told Reuters, saying the trial could start as early as September. The defendants will stand trial on several charges including "conspiracy to carry out terrorist acts" against the intelligence headquarters and U.S. interests with a string of suicide bombings that could have killed thousands of civilians in Jordan, a close ally of Washington. The main charges carry the death sentence if convicted, a judicial source said. Jayousi was shown confessing on state television in April that he first met Zarqawi at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, and that had he met him again in Iraq. The charge list will detail Jayousi's confession of how he planned the attacks with trucks laden with 80 tons of explosives, helped by key Syrian members of the group. Officials said cars carrying the explosives had been driven into Jordan from Syria. Both sides patrol the long desert border but smugglers often slip across it. A security source said confessions had revealed the group operated under the name of Kateab al-Tawhid (Brigades of Tawhid), purportedly affiliated to Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad blamed by the U.S. army for deadly suicide bombings in Iraq. Defense lawyers say the confessions were extracted under duress with no evidence to back up prosecution claims. Jordanian security sources said al Qaeda was incensed at the covert aid Jordan had given to the U.S. military campaign in Iraq and had tried to punish Jordan for supporting Washington's efforts to pacify post-war Iraq. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-08-01 |
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