8/10/2019 Courts Kept Busy as Jordan Works to Crush Support for Isis

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Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support

for Isis

From King Abdullah down, officials are blunt about strategy to target supporters of movement wreakinghavoc in Iraq and Syria

 Members of Islamist Sala in Jordan protest late last year in front of thestate security court in Amman to demand the release of their members heldin Jordanian prisons. Photograph: Majed Jaber/euters

 !hursday "# $o%ember "&'(

 “We are with the Islamic State and you are with bama and the infidels,! Ahmed Abu"halous a big, angry#looking man in blue prison overalls, shouts after being sentencedto five years in $ail for %promoting the views of a terrorist group! on the internet& 'heoutburst earns him a further () dinar *+(- fine for contempt of court&

It is a sunny morning in Amman and the three uniformed $udges in .ordan/s state

security court are briskly working their way through a pile of slim grey folders on the

bench before them& 0ach details the charges against 1( or so defendants accused of

supporting the fighters of the Islamic State *Isis-, now rampaging across Syria and Iraq

under their sinister black banners and sending nervous $itters across the Arab world&

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'hamer al#Khatib, convicted on the same charge, protests too2 %Why is it all right for

people to e3press sympathy for 4Syrian president5 6ashar al#Assad when he is killing

women and children7!

8is question goes unanswered but it resonates for Sunni 9uslims far

beyond.ordan as they watch western governments and their Arab allies mobilise to

fight the $ihadis while Assad gains the upper hand and Israel maintains its occupationover the :alestinians&

Security is tight inside and outside the building, guarded by a bewildering collection of

soldiers, policemen and gendarmes& ;elatives watch as prisoners in handcuffs and leg

irons shuffle past& 'he no#smoking signs that flank the obligatory pictures of

8ashemite monarchs past and present are ignored by court officials and black#gowned

lawyers alike& <hants of %Allahu Akbar! can be heard from the holding cells& =ike every

other prisoner escorted into the narrow metal cage that serves as a dock, Khatib and

 Abu "halous wear the bushy beard of the devout Salafi&

In recent weeks these scenes have become routine as the kingdom has moved swiftly

to crush the slightest sign of sympathy for or involvement with Isis and other e3tremist

groups > especially .abhat al#?usra, the Syrian branch of al#@aida& %We want to

deprive these terrorist organisations of any ideological basis they have,! e3plains

9ohammed al#9omani, the government spokesman&

“I/m dismayed by these cases,! says 9usa Abdallat, a dishevelled lawyer who is

representing B clients and repeatedly needles the chief $udge& %'hey are difficult to

defend and the court ignores the defence and imposes heavy punishments&!

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 Abu

6akr al#6aghdadi, self#proclaimed calpih of Islamic State&:hotograph2 A:

6ut many of the accused have confessed and pleaded guilty to using Facebook or the

messaging app Whatsapp to praise Isis or pledge allegiance to its self#proclaimed

caliph, Abu 6akr al#6aghdadi&

.ordan is one of the four Arab countries taking part in the CS#led coalition against Isis

but the only one that has borders with both Syria and Iraq& It was also the homeland of 

the notorious Abu 9usab al#Darqawi, the founder of al#@aida in Iraq > a directforerunner of Isis& 'he 1))( hotel bombings the group carried out in Amman, killing E)

people on what is often called %.ordan/s G!, are a terrible reminder of the risks of

homegrown fanaticism&

From King Abdullah II down, officials are blunt about their anti#Isis strategy& %We might

run out of military targets,! says 9omani, %but the security and ideological fronts will

continue& We have a good grip on this phenomenon& 'hese people don/t have a warm

environment to flourish in&!

=eading .ordanian e3ponents of the Salafi#$ihadi world view, such as Abu 9uhammad

al#9aqdisi, are now behind bars or silent, fearing arrest by the powerful mukhabaratsecret police& Imams who are deemed e3tremist have been removed& A wider

government information campaign echoes the king/s well#honed message about the

values of moderate Islam and the re$ection of the %tafkiri! school that Isis uses to

sanction the brutal and often sectarian killing of so#called apostates&

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'he damaged wedding hall at the ;adisson SAS hotel in Amman after a suicide bomb

attack in ?ovember 1))(& :hotograph2 8ussein 9allaGA:

mar thman, aka Abu @atada, the radical preacher who was deported from 6ritain

after prolonged legal wrangling and acquitted on terrorism charges by the state

security court in September, has attacked Isis and condemned the beheadings of

western $ournalists&

 Arrests and prosecutions intensified after Isis captured 9osul in .une, but the

groundwork had been laid by an earlier amendment to .ordan/s anti#terrorism law& It is

estimated that 1,))) .ordanians have fought and 1() of them have died in Syria >

making them the third largest Arab contingent in Isis after Saudi Arabians and

'unisians&

'he threat the most radical of them pose is evidently far greater at home than abroad2

in one characteristically slick and chilling Isis video > entitled %a message to the

.ordanian tyrant! > a smiling, long#haired young man in black pats the e3plosive beltround his waist as he burns his passport and his fellow fighters praise the memory of

Darqawi, who was killed in Iraq in 1))E&

“'he state is not really concerned about the e3port of terrorism,! argues a leading

liberal intellectual& %It worries about people in Darqa 4a .ordanian city5 making a

homemade bomb&!

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;adic

al cleric Abu @atada at a court hearing in Amman in September 1)& :hotograph2

.ordan :i3G"etty

Statistics about support for Isis in .ordan are disputed, with the government accusing

the media of e3aggeration& 9arwan Shehadeh, a researcher with a background in

Salafi activism, estimates the group is backed by H,)))#),))) people, but most of

those only since the dramatic events in .une, and they are not organised& %.ordan has

made a mistake entering into an international coalition,! he argues& %'he CS put huge

pressure on .ordan because they don/t want Isis to reach the borders of Israel&!

9uin Khoury, a professional pollster, has reached a similar conclusion about motives&

%Isis sympathisers feel in$ustice and anger at America and Israel and always felt that

Islam was under attack by <rusaders, and now they don/t agree with .ordan being

involved in the coalition&!

 Adnan Abu deh, a respected former minister, describes the government as %walking

a tightrope!&

Ideology is certainly important but poverty and hopelessness may matter more,especially to the young& %ou hear more and more stories of disaffected .ordanians

going off to fight in Syria,! reports a western diplomat& %'hese are people with very little

education, no $ob and nothing to lose, so whatever salary they get from Isis will be

more than what they could get at home&!

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 Abu 9usab al#

Darqawi, the .ordanian who founded al#@aida in Iraq&:hotograph2 A:;ecently, in the Abdali area of Amman, street vendors taunted riot police with pro#Isis

slogans when an unlicensed flea market was cleared by municipal officials& .ordanians

gossip endlessly about Jaesh > the pe$orative Arabic name for the group&

“Why bother with the daily grind when you can go to 9osul, get paid )) a month,

get a wife > and live an Islamic way,! went an e3change between two men overheard

by a fellow passenger in a ta3i& ;umour has it that a woman whose husband died

fighting with Isis now receives a generous widow/s pension from $ihadi coffers&

Still, the crackdown has clearly had its effect& In the impoverished southern town of9aan, the black flags that flew defiantly in the summer have disappeared& In 8ay

?aLLal, a conservative area of Amman, slogans scrawled on the breeLeblock walls

say %death to Israel! or hail the resistance in "aLa, but there are none about Isis& A

local Salafi suspected of terrorist sympathies was arrested recently by masked special

forces personnel who stormed his home as snipers deployed on surrounding rooftops&

8undreds are said to have been detained across the country&

'he district was also home to .ihad "haben, a young activist with the 8irak

movement, whose street protests were an important element part of the brief

.ordanian chapter  of the Arab spring&=ast year he abandoned his studies to travel to Syria and $oin .abhat al#?usra& In his

final Facebook posting before he was killed in Idlib, "haben warned the CS that it

would have to wade through %rivers of blood! and face the knives of Darqawi and the

airliners of sama bin =aden& %?othing had changed in .ordan,! sighs a friend, %so he

and others went to look for another solution& Waging $ihad was one of them&!

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 A

fighter from the Islamist Syrian rebel group .abhat al#?usra seen through a smashed

bus window in Aleppo&:hotograph2 Ahmed .adallahG;euters

mar Khadr, B, a :alestinian from Darqa, went to Syria to fight Assad, not to build an

Islamic state, insists his father, Deid& After si3 months he returned disillusioned to

'urkey and went voluntarily to the .ordanian embassy in Ankara& ;efused all help

there, he flew back to Amman where he was met by mukhabarat officers and is now

serving a five#year prison sentence for membership of a terrorist group&

“'his was a case of youthful enthusiasm,! says his father& %mar followed the Syrian

war closely on social media& Someone sent him pictures of .abhat al#?usra& I told the

prosecutor in the state security court Mif I was in your place I would pardon these

people because you are turning them into supporters of Isis& It will only lead to more

e3tremism/&!

'he efficiency of the mukhabarat is not in question& Foreigners and .ordanians agree

that there are high levels of trust in the state and its security agencies& Football fans

watching Al#Faisaly Amman at a match chanted patriotic slogans urging the king to

crush Isis&

“If I heard anyone talking about Jaesh I would report them to the nearest police

station,! volunteers a ta3i driver who spent years in the army& 'he real fear is of a lone#

wolf attack > thus the routine body searches and metal detectors at hotels and

government buildings in the capital&

f course security is important, says Abu deh, a powerful figure under King 8ussein

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and, now, in his H)s, a liberal voice who emphasises the need for real political and

economic reform in .ordan& It/s an important point at a time when the preoccupation

with terrorism has all but silenced talk of the changes some hoped would come in the

early, hopeful phase of the Arab spring& %0ven if you defeat Isis in the field you will not

destroy them,! he argues&

“'o kill the idea you need real reform in the Arab world& Isis has helped those who arenot sincere about reform to find an e3cuse& 'he irony is that the e3cuse perpetuates

the reasons that Isis came to e3ist in the first place&!

Posted by Thavam