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| Britain |
| Al-Tartusi condemns Amman bombings |
| 2005-11-14 |
| The legitimacy of last week's triple hotel bombing in the Jordanian capital Amman, has been questioned on various Islamic Internet forums, and condemned in a fatwa issued by a fundamentalist sheikh. The al-Qaeda in Iraq terror group, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, broke with tradition by issuing at least three messages justifying the bombings, which killed 57 people and prompted spontaneous protests against terrorism by angry Jordanians. The third said one of the bombers was a woman, though it later turned out that her explosives failed to detonate. Following an initial outpouring of support for the bombings from the members of several Jihadist forums, one well-known fundamentalist Sheikh, Abu Basir al-Tartousi, has issued an unexpected fatwa, condemning the operation. In the religious edict, the Salafist sheikh, who is of Syrian origin but has lived in exile in London for years, states that the attacks were a mistake. "This operation contains more negative than positive elements. For this reason it is not allowed to attribute it to Islam, or even to the Jihad [holy war]," he said. According to al-Tartousi, one of several fundamentalist imams who have taken refuge in Britain, like Abu Qatada and Omar Bakri - who is currently in Lebanon and has been banned from returning to the UK - the fact that most of the victims were innocent Muslims makes the attacks unjust. "It is forbidden to carry out actions of this kind, it is a mistaken action and is not allowed," he wrote in the fatwa. The Salafist sheikh asks if the al-Qaeda leadership had allowed its attackers to strike the Radisson Hotel, despite the wedding reception going on inside it, or whether it left the suicide bombers free to decide. "I have often wondered how it could be possible to say that an action that strikes other Muslims who were at a wedding party was Jihad. The attackers, once they saw the party, should have left," he said. Analysing the third statement al-Qaeda issued about the attacks, the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arab revealed that one phrase of the message, which appeared on the Internet, implicitly recognises the carrying out of the attack during a wedding reception as an error, though it does not apologise. The Iraqi woman who should have been the fourth suicide bomber involved in the attacks, was shown on Jordanian television over the weekend, with the explosives still strapped to her body. Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, 35, is sister of the right-hand-man of al-Qaeda in Iraq's leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Samer Mubarak Arous al-Rishawi, who was killed by US forces in Fallujah. She was arrested on Saturday in Amman. In a confession broadcast on TV she showed no remorse or emotion, and explained that she had been at the Radisson hotel with her husband, but when she tried to detonate the explosives they failed and she fled after her husband blew himself up, in what was the most deadly of the three attacks. No details were given of how she came to be arrested. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, 35, is sister of the right-hand-man of al-Qaeda in Iraq's leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Samer Mubarak Arous al-Rishawi, who was killed by US forces in Fallujah. Talk about Little Miss Gold Mine of information. Her capture falls dangerously close to too good to be true. I understand that sometimes you just get lucky - but all of this just seems too easy. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-11-14 10:12 |