Jordan executes 15 in crackdown on terrorism

Jordan steps up campaign against militant extremism following ISIL-claimed attack but lawyers fear it may backfire.

The entrance of the Suwaqa prison, south of the Amman. Jordan where 15 prisoners including convicted "terrorists" were hanged at dawn on March 4,2017. Khalil Mazraawi / AFP

AMMAN // Jordan on Saturday executed 15 men convicted of terrorism and other crimes in the largest round of hangings since the country stepped up a crackdown on extremists in recent years.

Ten of the condemned men were convicted on terrorism charges and the other five had committed “barbaric” sexual offences, the government spokesman, minister of state for media affairs Mohammad Momani, told Petra News Agency. The crimes were committed between 2003 and 2016.

The executions, carried out at dawn at Swaqa prison south of Amman, come as Jordan steps up a campaign against militant extremism following an ISIL-claimed attack in December that killed 10 people. Although terrorist attacks in Jordan are relatively rare, the country is on high alert given the rise of ISIL and other extremist groups active in neighbouring Syria and Iraq.

Among those executed were some of the 13 men arrested last March in a raid on an ISIL-linked terror cell in Irbid, a city close to the Syrian border.

Jordanian security forces killed seven extremists wearing explosive belts during the raid, in which one soldier died.

Also hanged was Mahmoud Al Masharfeh, who killed five Jordanian intelligence staff at the Baqaa Palestinian refugee camp, near Amman, on the first day of Ramadan last year. The state security court sentenced him to death in August.

Al Masharfeh had spent time in prison a few years earlier after being arrested for attempting to join extremists in Syria, according to an Islamist who shared his prison cell.

“He wanted to perform the jihad in Syria but was arrested before he could go,” he said. “He shot the intelligence members in revenge for something they did to him.”

Mr Momani said the other terrorism convicts executed included Nabeel Jaoura, who killed a British man in an attack on tourists at the Roman amphitheatre in Amman in 2006, and Ahmad Yousef Al Jaghbeer, who was involved in the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad in 2003 that killed 17 people.

Also executed was Riad Ismaeel Abdullah, who last September shot dead the prominent Jordanian writer Nahed Hattar for posting a cartoon on his Facebook page that lampooned ISIL’s view of the afterlife.

Jordanian authorities have been imposing harsher penalties on terrorism suspects, sympathisers of extremist groups and those convicted of terrorist acts, particularly after an attack claimed by ISIL in the southern city of Al Karak in December that left 10 dead, most of them members of the security forces. Prison terms of 10 to 15 years are now common for those convicted of promoting extremist ideology on social media.

But lawyers dealing with terrorism cases at the state security court said they feared the harsher measures could backfire.

“We do not justify terrorist acts and we support harsher measures against those who kill innocent people,” said Abdel Qader Khatib, a lawyer who handles terrorism-related cases. “But we are concerned that tougher sentences against those who show their support on Facebook would harden them and they will seek revenge. A heavy-handed security crackdown would only make things worse.”

Lawyers say hundreds of people were arrested and remain in detention without charge after the Karak attacks.