01-Sep-22: "If there's a problem with the treaty, it's technical and Jordan which created it can fix it any time it wants." [VIDEO]

Image extracted from the Jordan page of State Department's authoritative online
compendium Treaties in Force, current edition

This post is about a recent webinar hosted by EMET in which Sarah Stern who heads that fine organization discussed with Arnold Roth how our search for justice is progressing.

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Since 1995, a treaty made between Jordan and the US has served as the legal basis on which multiple Jordanian fugitives have been extradited from Jordan and prosecuted in the United States under US law in American courts for terrorism offences.

All of that changed when Jordan claimed, via a March 20, 2017 declaration of its highest appellate court ["21-Mar-17: Tamimi extradition: When it's claimed that something is illegal in Jordan..."], that the treaty is invalid. 

The US State Department, aware of the Jordanian claim, states that the treaty is valid and effective. Nonetheless Jordan persists in standing by what it's judges said and refuses to extradite the fugitive Sbarro bomber, Ahlam Ahmad Aref Al-Tamimi, to Washington where criminal prosecutors are waiting to try her. 

Jordan was formally asked to do this when US federal charges against Tamimi were made public for the first time on March 20, 2017. In fact, we understand it had been asked long before - years before - in off-the-record meetings. Tamimi was indicted on July 15, 2013. Though no US official has said so publicly, our understanding is that serious efforts were made from that date onwards - even though the charges were sealed, meaning confidential and unreported - to get Jordan's co-operation in handing Tamimi over to US law enforcement officials. These US efforts failed. 

To underscore this: six days after those 2013 charges against the Jordanian terrorist were finally announced to the world, Jordan in effect said "no sir, we don't have to." 

Without making any public statement at the time, Jordan let it beknown that it refused ["20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"]. And it has continued to refuse, ensuring Tamimi can live unharmed, unfettered, undeterred as a free Jordanian citizen under the protection of the Hashemite Kingdom.

So Tamimi faces trial in the US and, if convicted, imprisonment. Obviously none of this will happen if she stays shielded by US ally Jordan.

The charges Tamimi faces are laid out in this Department of Justice media announcement: "Individual Charged in Connection With 2001 Terrorist Attack in Jerusalem That Resulted in Death of Americans".

Arnold Roth was recently the guest of Sarah Stern, the dynamic head of Endowment for Middle East Truth, in a video interview. The August 10, 2022 event was part of its Weekly EMET Webinars series. The date came a day after the 21st anniversary of the Sbarro massacre.

A collection of previous EMET webinar videos is hosted on YouTube.

Arnold's responses, as he wrote in a Tweet, focused less on bombs and more on the painful ongoing failures in Washington and among US Jewish organizational leadership.  

Founded in 2005, The Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) is a Washington, D.C. based think tank and policy center with an unabashedly pro-America and pro-Israel stance. EMET, which means truth in Hebrew, prides itself on challenging the falsehoods and misrepresentations that abound in US Middle East policy.