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| Middle East |
| Jordan: Chief suspect in killing of U.S. diplomat is in Syria |
| 2003-02-04 |
| A member of the al Qaeda network identified by Jordan as a suspect in the killing of an American diplomat in Amman in October is in Syria, diplomatic sources said, according to AFP. Jordanian national, Moammar Ahmad Yussef, is a deputy of Abu Mussab al Zarqawi, the mastermind of the slaying of Laurence Foley, a senior executive of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In mid-December, Jordan announced the detention of a Libyan and a Jordanian in connection with the killing and said the pair were members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. "The principal suspect is Libyan Salem Saad Salem bin Soued, who shot Laurence Foley. His accomplice, a Jordanian, Yasser Fathi Ibrahim, waited for him in the car," Information Minister Mohammed Adwan said at the time. "They had been in contact with one of the senior officials of that network, a Jordanian fugitive named Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayleh, who is also known as Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, and who has been on the run since 1999," Adwan said. According to a diplomatic source in Jordan, quoted by AFP, Yussef telephoned the Libyan on the day of Foley's slaying to make sure it had been carried out. The call was made from Damascus, Syria, where Yussef is present, the source added. Traced the phone call, did they? Jordanian officials said al-Zarqawi ordered Foley's killing and identified the former as a fugitive who was sentenced by an Amman court to 15 years in prison in 2000 on charges of conspiracy to carry out terror attacks on Western targets in Jordan. Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb said late last year that al-Zarqawi was believed to be hiding in northern Iraq, an area beyond Baghdad's control. They'll turn up sooner or later. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #2 Far from the jordanians kicking any ass, i seem to recall the Syrians backed down when Israel threatened to intervene on the side of the Jordanians. And it was in 1970. (that was when the PLO left to Beirut then in 1982 left Beirut to Tunis) |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-02-04 13:15:46 |
| #1 Jordan has a long standing beef with Syria, who intervened with some armor during the attempted Paleo revolt in the 1970's (?). The Jordanians kicked their ass, as I recall. |
| Posted by: Chuck 2003-02-04 12:45:20 |