Man jailed for a year for vandalising Jordan's Roman columns

He was also fined $4,200 for defacing the ruins in the ancient city of Jerash last year

Tourists walk next to ancient Roman landmarks in Jerash, Jordan. Reuters

A Jordanian court has sentenced a man to a year in jail and fined him $4,200 for vandalising columns in the Roman city of Jerash last year, the official news agency said on Monday.

Jerash, north of Amman, is one of the best-preserved sites of Middle East antiquity and a major destination for western tourists who come to Jordan.

It formed part of the Decapolis, ten cities in the Levant that the Romans supported as a defensive line to protect their possessions in Palestine.

The agency said that a court in the town of Jerash found the man, who was not named, guilty of “wilfully sabotaging part of the Jerash ruins”.

“The convicted man painted several of the columns in Jerash black, wrote on them and defaced them,” the agency said.

The court's decision is not subject to appeal.

The sentence and fine comprise the minimum legal punishment in Jordan for vandalising antiquities that belong to the state. The maximum punishment is three years in jail and the same amount as a fine.

Official data shows that 379,000 people visited Jerash last year, with foreigners comprising 80 per cent of the visitors.

In 2021, when coronavirus restrictions limited tourism, 104,00 people visited the site, of which 60 per cent were foreigners.

Jordan has some of the world's best archaeological sites but urban expansion has encroached on many of them, including Jerash, where rubbish is sometimes strewn across the ruins.

A significant part of Jerash, which was called Jerasa in Roman times, remains unexcavated, together with other cities that made up the Decapolis, particularly Capitolias, situated within the northern city of Irbid.

International interest in Jordan increased over the past decade as upheaval swept through Syria and Lebanon, the other attractions in the Arab Levant.

Political instability in Lebanon and the civil war in Syria left Europeans looking to visit the Levant with little choice other than to choose Jordan.

Most are interested in hiking in the Wadi Rum desert valley or visiting the famed Nabataean ruins of Petra, a major trading centre before it was overrun by the Romans.

But some are also interested in exploring Decapolis cities to the north, particularly Jerash and Gadara, now known as Umm Qais.

Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who is 100, visited Jerash in the 1970s while Britain's Prince William went there five years ago. King Charles visited Gadara in 2021, before he took the throne.

Jordan has focused on attracting western tourists by offering to subsidise European budget airlines, which link Amman to about 20 European cities.