Jordan Times
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Zarqawi hometown seethes after blasts
By Cynthia Johnston
Reuters
ZARQA — In the hometown of the man whose Al Qaeda
wing in Iraq says it carried out triple bombings of Amman hotels, neighbours and
relatives had one message for Abu Mussab Zarqawi: Repent.
Wednesday's attacks, the deadliest by militants in the Kingdom shattered a sense
of immunity from suicide attacks that have bloodied neighbouring Iraq.
Zarqa, Zarqawi's birthplace, was seething on Friday, two days after the
bombings.
Some residents said Zarqawi deserved death for attacks on his own country.
Others vowed personally to hand him over to the security forces should he ever
set foot in his hometown.
“If I saw him, I would tell him to repent and try to learn about true religion
that does not kill innocent civilians,” said Hazem Madadha, 34, who said he was
a childhood neighbour of Zarqawi.
“I have very bad feelings toward him. He has hurt the name of Zarqa, Jordan and
Islam,” he added as he sat in a grocery shop chatting with two cousins of the
militant in the Masoum neighbourhood where Zarqawi grew up.
Born Ahmed Fadhil Khalayleh, Zarqawi was influenced by radical preachers he met
there. He left Jordan in 1989 for Afghanistan where fellow volunteers were
fighting the “infidel” Soviet army.
He was among the last of thousands of Arabs who, like Saudi-born Osama Ben
Laden, went to fight in Afghanistan with US, Saudi and Pakistani assistance.
Zarqawi was remembered by neighbours and shopkeepers in Zarqa mainly as a street
thug in the 1980s.
Some relatives believed him to be behind violence against US forces and their
allies in Iraq.
“If Abu Mussab killed children, it is right to kill him,” said Yousef Khalayleh,
a 26-year-old cousin.
“If he was involved in what happened in Amman, we want nothing to do with him.”
Another cousin, 30-year-old Amjad Khalayleh, said he would consider Zarqawi “an
enemy for all eternity” if it was proved that he was behind the Amman attacks.
“If it is really Abu Mussab, we hope he will be held accountable,” he said.
Zarqawi became Ben Laden's deputy in Iraq after he pledged allegiance to the
overall Al Qaeda leader in 2004. Believed to be in his late 30s, he has inspired
a seemingly endless supply of militants from across the Arab world to blow
themselves up in suicide missions in Iraq.
In Zarqa, residents said security had been tightened since the attacks. Police
were posted on the highway leading into town, monitoring motorists and
inspecting trucks.
Inside the city, many people were reluctant to talk about Zarqawi, who was
sentenced to death in absentia in 2002 for plotting attacks against US and
Israeli targets in the Kingdom.
One man, a 61-year-old Pakistani toy merchant who said he had worked in Zarqa
for years and spoke fluent Arabic, condemned the Amman bombings as the work of
“infidels” but declined to say what he thought of Zarqawi.
“I don't know anything,” he said. “I just know about children's toys.”