Jordan Times
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
'Attack could have
killed 80,000'
The members of the terrorist network planned on attacking the
headquarters of the General Intelligence Department, the Prime Ministry and the
US embassy
By Mahmoud Al Abed
AMMAN — Suspects arrested earlier this month in connection with a major
terrorist plot confessed to planning to carry out the first ever Al Qaeda
chemical attack in Jordan.
The members of the terrorist network planned on attacking the headquarters of
the General Intelligence Department, the Prime Ministry and the US embassy in
Amman.
In taped testimonies broadcast on Jordan Television Monday, the suspects
revealed that the mastermind of the operation was the Iraq-based top Al Qaeda
leader, Ahmad Fadeel Khalaileh, better known as Abu Mussab Zarqawi.
The TV programme quoted experts as saying that if successful, the operation
could have killed 80,000 persons and caused physical harm to 160,000 others.
The suspects in custody are the group's leader, Azmi Jaiousi, Ahmad Samir,
Hussein Sharif Hussein, Anas Sheikh Amin, Mohammad Salamah Sha'ban and Hosni
Sharif Hussein. Four others, Mwaffaq Odwan, Hassan Simsimiyya, Salah Marjehm and
Ibrahim Abu Kheir linked to the same plot, were killed in shoot out with
security forces when they refused to surrender.
Last week, authorities announced that they had killed four terrorist suspects,
three of them reportedly Iraqis, in shoot-out in the Hashmi Shamali
neighbourhood of Amman.
Jaiousi, who appeared in the televised programme, said that he met Zarqawi in
Afghanistan, then in Iraq, where he was recruited to carry out the attack.
"Abu Mussab assigned me to go to Jordan, with Mwaffaq Odwan. Our mission was to
instigate military work on the Jordanian arena. He [Zarqawi] arranged for my
infiltration to Jordan," Jaiousi testified.
Jaiousi added that contacts with his leader were through prepaid mobile phone
cards and through messengers who came from Syria.
The first attack was planned against the General Intelligence Department, using
three large trucks laden with 20 tonnes of chemical explosives and two small
cars.
Using $170,000 Zarqawi sent him from Iraq, Jaiousi said the group purchased the
vehicles and structurally reinforced them, bought the chemicals and manufactured
part of them in a deserted house in a village near Irbid, then later in a
warehouse near Ramtha.
"I envisioned the result after executing the work. According to my experience as
an explosives expert, the whole of the Intelligence Department would have been
totally destroyed, and nothing of it would have remained, nor anything
surrounding it. Destruction would have even reached far away areas," Jaiousi
said.
The suspects said they were driven by religious beliefs to carry out the terror
attacks.
Hussein Sharif, who helped in preparing the trucks, said: "I agreed to
participate in this operation, because I thought it would serve Islam."
Security officials arrested members of the group in March and earlier this month
and seized five explosives laden vehicles.
His Majesty King Abdullah described the plot as "a crime never before seen in
the Kingdom.”
He told the San Francisco Chronicle, while visiting the US last week, that "it
was a major, major operation."
"It would have decapitated the government," the King told the paper in April 17
interview.
Zarqawi was sentenced to death in absentia earlier this month, when the State
Security Court found him guilty of masterminding the October 2002 murder of
USAID employee Laurence Foley.