Jordan Times
Friday, September 22, 2006
7 sentenced to death over hotel attacks
By Rana Husseini
AMMAN — The State Security Court on Thursday
sentenced to death seven people for the November 9 triple hotel bombings that
killed 60 in Amman.
The only one in custody was 35-year-old Iraqi woman Sajida Rishawi, who
confessed on Jordan TV shortly after the blasts that she intended to carry out a
suicide attack on one of the three hotels.
Six others, including another Iraqi woman and a Jordanian man were sentenced in
absentia and remain at large.
They were identified as Mazen Mohammad Shehadeh, a Jordanian, Othman Ismail
Dalimi, Hiam Hassan and her brother Walid, Nihad Rishawi and Karim Jassim
Fahdawi, all Iraqi.
The tribunal declared the seven “guilty of possessing explosives with illicit
intent and plotting subversive acts that led to the death of individuals”.
The court handed Rishawi two death sentences.
The court dropped charges against Ahmad Fadeel Khalayleh, better known as Abu
Mussab Zarqawi, after obtaining proof that he was killed in Iraq in June.
Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was headed by Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the
Amman attacks.
Initially, Rishawi said in a televised confession that her own belt failed to
detonate and she fled, but she later told her trial that she was an unwilling
participant in the attacks and never tried to set off her blast.
She was the first woman sentenced to execution in Jordan on terrorism charges.
Her court-appointed lawyer Hussein Masri told reporters that the verdict was
fair and that he was unable to present any evidence to support his client.
During the five-month trial, Masri argued that her confession had been extracted
under duress.