12-Jul-22: No political dimension: Our letter to President Biden and his answer

Another AP story from a year ago [Image Source]

Associated Press began reporting last night (Monday) that the White House has already responded to the letter we emailed to President Joseph Biden on Sunday [we described that here: "11-Jul-22: President Biden is heading to Jerusalem and we're asking for a few minutes of his time"]. 

They say:

The U.S. said Monday it is still seeking the extradition of a Palestinian woman in Jordan convicted of aiding a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in 2001. But it declined to comment on a request from the family of one of the victims for a meeting with President Joe Biden... The Roths have been waging a campaign for the extradition of Tamimi since she was released by Israel in a 2011 prisoner swap with the Hamas militant group and sent to her native Jordan, where she lives freely and has been a familiar face in the media... ["US seeks extradition of Palestinian attacker in Jordan", AP, July 11, 2022]

The AP report goes on to quote a high-level source that

“The U.S. government continues to seek her extradition and the Government of Jordan’s assistance in bringing her to justice for her role in the heinous attack,” the National Security Council said Monday.

Continuing to seek her extradition. It's a term that needs some context. And we're happy to provide it. 

The US has never made a single public call on Jordan to extradite Tamimi, beyond the formal request (under a 1995 extradition  treaty which is valid and in force) in 2017. 

It has also never publicly criticized Jordan for breaching the treaty. This despite the reality that Tamimi has lived free in Jordan since October 2011, traveling freely from Jordan throughout the Arab world to address rallies and make blood-curdling pro-terror speeches, while being the presenter of her own made-in-Jordan weekly TV program devoted to terror, terrorists and the need to support both. 

We're genuinely glad to be told that the US is continuing to pursue extradition. But after so many years of zero progress, is it not time to ask what those efforts are? And why they don't succeed? Jordan, after all, is a small but strategic ally, massively dependent on US largesse, the beneficiary of a whole raft of made-in-USA special facilities, programs and strategically helpful attention.

It's fair to say we are disappointed by the non-response. 

And allow us to be clear about this aspect: no one has been in touch with us from the President's staff, the State Department, the National Security Council or the US Embassy in Israel.

Jordan's royals and the Bidens - July 2021

But here's the point. Throughout the years of our immensely frustrating campaign to see the government of the United States respect and defend its own laws, criminal code and treaties in relation to the Tamimi case, poor - even absent - communication from US government officials has been an almost invariable constant.

The Tamimi case has special significance to us. 

That's in large part because the Jordanian fugitive planted the human bomb at the Jerusalem pizzeria in August 2001 whose explosive malevolence erased sixteen lives, one of whom was the life of our beloved fifteen year old daughter Malki. Another American woman, a tourist visiting from New Jersey, was murdered along with the unborn child in her womb. And another American woman was rendered so profoundly brain-damaged that she has remained in a comatose state from that summer 2001 afternoon until today.

Now that the Biden team have explicitly blocked our efforts to press the case, we feel justified in sharing the letter we sent him to which no answer will ever come. 

Here it is.

July 10, 2022

The Honorable Joseph R. Biden
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500-0005 

Dear President Biden,

Extraditing our child’s killer from Jordan

As you arrive in Jerusalem, we write to remind you of the open letter we addressed to you in the pages of the Wall Street Journal last summer. It appeared on the day you hosted Jordan’s monarch in the Oval Office of the White House: [“Jordan Harbors Our Daughter’s Killer | Biden should demand the extradition of Ahlam Tamimi”, Frimet and Arnold Roth, Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2021]. 

It was distressing to us that you did not respond in any way, not via the White House press spokesperson; not via any members of your staff; not in the months that followed; not even when you hosted the same king in the same Oval Office this past May.

Our letter then, and the thoughts we share with you below, have no political dimension to them. And in sharp contrast to the letter from the family of an Aljazeera reporter shot and killed as she stood in the midst of a firefight between Palestinian Arab gunmen and Israeli forces in Jenin, it’s not necessary for us to assert again and again – as they do about their case – what we believe to be the cause of the death for which we seek accountability. It’s tragically clear.

Our daughter Malki, a sweet American girl who never reached her sixteenth birthday, was murdered by a Jordanian reporter called Ahlam Tamimi. In contrast to the Shireen Abu Akleh case, no committees of enquiry, not the United Nations or the New York Times or the Washington Post or CNN or the Associated Press or B’Tselem or even the White House spokesperson are needed to lay the blame.

A massacre happened at a pizzeria in the heart of Jerusalem on a hot summer vacation day when it was filled with children. Tamimi, again and again, on television, via YouTube and in live appearances, has said she did it. She calls it “my operation”. She brags about what she did. In a viral interview, she said “I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped for a larger toll.” 

Last October in a video conference to Turkish schoolgirls and young women [source] she called the bombing “a crown on my head. By the grace of Allah, I joined the annals of history by committing the best act, the best operation, the best path - the path of Jihad.”

Tamimi has never expressed a syllable of regret beyond saying of the children she targeted that she wishes more had been killed that day.

She has been an FBI Most Wanted terrorist since March 14, 2017, the day that long-sealed US federal terror charges were finally made public. And in all the time that has passed, she has lived free as a bird in Jordan. She is still there, shielded by Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

In the 5+ years since the charges were made public, the two of us have reached out to a depressingly long list of officials and lawmakers seeking to bring an end to the cruel game being played at our expense. It involves serious people with extraordinary power and influence telling us (those who bother to respond at all since most prefer to look away or pretend not to hear) that the US “continues to seek her extradition and will continue to work to ensure she faces justice” [source].

Years of this.

Jordan, to say it clearly, is not a free or liberal place. Its media are among the mostly tightly restricted of any country and its governments are assiduous in executing the will of King Abdullah. Yet for five years, Tamimi had her own terror-advocating TV show, made in Jordan and distributed from there to Arabic-speaking audiences throughout the world. The ruler whom you so admire, whom you praised lavishly last summer [“Biden calls Jordan king a loyal ally in ‘tough neighborhood’”, The Associated Press, July 20, 2021] must have approved it. On any view, he certainly did nothing to shut it down.

Five years, sir.

Something is obviously terribly wrong with how the pursuit of America’s most wanted female fugitive is going. If it’s accountability for her crimes that we speak – and accountability is what your press spokesperson has invoked over and again these past few weeks in the Aljazeera reporter’s case – then it’s worth asking whether five years is enough time to have achieved that.

Nothing in our handful of encounters with senior figures in your State Department and that of President Trump has given us even the smallest hope that the US wants this woman in chains, on a flight from Amman and extradited to a DC courthouse.

The opposite is true. When politicians and their bureaucrats want to justify their action or inaction, they rarely lack the words. But in our case, most by far of our approaches to Washington insiders have been answered with silence. We want to think it stems from shame and embarrassment but that’s speculative on our part. What is abundantly clear is that getting justice for the small handful of American lives, all of them Jewish, extinguished among a much larger number of Tamimi’s victims, is – in the cold calculus of today’s Washington – evidently not worth the political irritation it will cause.

We want to explain this to you better in a face-to-face meeting. We want you to look us in the eyes, Mr. President, and tell us how Jordan’s king can be a praiseworthy ally even as he cynically tramples –on narrow technical grounds that it turns out don’t hold water – a treaty made by President Clinton and King Hussein, his greatly admired father.

That treaty has for a quarter century been the essential tool that enabled US law enforcement to apprehend a string of Jordanian terrorists and bring them to trial and eventually prison in the US. It’s a valuable part of America’s constant, essential vigilance against the dark forces of jihad. There’s a much larger issue than simply justice for the life of an American child at stake when an ally – one who benefits from billions of dollars in US taxpayer funded aid each year – trashes a bilateral agreement at will.

In your Washington Post opinion piece on Saturday [“Joe Biden: Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia”, Washington Post., July 9, 2022] you mentioned King Abdullah of Jordan recently referring to the “new vibe” in the region with countries asking “How can we connect with each other and work with each other.” The answer in Jordan’s case is clear. It can honor the unquestionably valid treaty and extradite Tamimi.

We’re approaching the fiftieth yahrzeit of Abraham Joshua Heschel, a luminary in the world of Jewish thought and a prominent figure in America’s struggle for human rights who passed away in 1972. Rabbi Heschel observed that "...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

We are bereaved parents as you are, sir. We have a burning sense that injustice in the wake of our child’s murder is winning. Years of experience tell us this is so. We ask that you address this as only the leader of the United States can and take the steps that will bring the Sbarro bomber to long-thwarted justice in Washington.

Respectfully,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem

You will have our sincere appreciation if you share this widely.  

11-Jul-22: President Biden is heading to Jerusalem and we're asking for a few minutes of his time

Associated Press has just reported ["Parents of slain Israeli-American girl seek Biden meeting", Josef Federman, July 10, 2022] that we - the parents of Malki Roth - have been in touch with the White House and requested a meeting with the US president during his visit to Jerusalem later this week.

JERUSALEM (AP) — The family of an Israel-American girl killed in a 2001 Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem is seeking a meeting with President Joe Biden in hopes of forcing Jordan to extradite a woman convicted in the deadly attack.

The parents of Malki Roth turned to Biden on Sunday asking to meet with the president when he comes to Jerusalem this week. They want the president to put pressure on Jordan, a close American ally, to send Ahlam Tamimi to the U.S. for trial.

“We are bereaved parents as you are, sir. We have a burning sense that injustice in the wake of our child’s murder is winning,” Frimet and Arnold Roth wrote in their letter. “We ask that you address this as only the leader of the United States can.”

The Roths have been waging a campaign for the extradition of Ahlam Tamimi since she was released by Israel in a 2011 prisoner swap with the Hamas militant group. Under that deal, Tamimi was sent to her native Jordan, where she lives freely and has been a familiar face in the media. Jordanian authorities have rebuffed calls to extradite her.

On Aug. 9, 2001, a Palestinian bomber walked into a Jerusalem pizzeria and blew himself up, killing 15 people. Two American citizens, including 15-year-old Malki Roth, were among the dead.

Tamimi, who chose the target and guided the bomber there, was arrested weeks later and sentenced by Israel to 16 life sentences. Since her release, she has expressed no remorse and even boasted that she was pleased with the high death toll. In a 2017 interview with The Associated Press, she said the Palestinians have a right to resist Israel by any means, including deadly attacks.

Roth has repeatedly called on U.S. authorities to press Jordan, which has received billions of dollars in American assistance, to turn over Tamimi for trial.

The United States has charged Tamimi with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against American nationals. The charge was filed under seal in 2013 and announced by the Justice Department four years later. Her name was added to the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists.

The U.S. and Jordan signed an extradition treaty in 1995. But in 2017, Jordan’s high court blocked her extradition, reportedly claiming the treaty was never ratified.

Two years ago, the Trump administration said it was considering withholding aid to Jordan over the case, but ultimately no action was taken.

Jordan is one of the United States’ closest partners in the Arab world, seen as a force of moderation and stability in the volatile Middle East. American officials appear to be wary of sparking a diplomatic crisis with a key ally.

“Something is obviously terribly wrong with how the pursuit of America’s most wanted female fugitive is going,” the Roths wrote in their letter, sent to Biden through the U.S. Embassy.

“We want to explain this to you better in a face-to-face meeting,” they added. “We want you to look us in the eyes, Mr. President, and tell us how Jordan’s king can be a praiseworthy ally.”

Biden is scheduled to land in Israel on Wednesday before traveling to a Mideast summit in Saudi Arabia on Friday. He has no plans to be in Jordan, though Jordanian officials are expected at the summit.

There was no immediate comment from either the White House or the Jordanian Royal Hashemite Court.

Roth’s letter was sent days after the family of a Palestinian-American journalist killed while covering an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank lashed out at Biden over his administration’s response to her death.

Relatives of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh expressed “grief, outrage and (a) sense of betrayal” in a letter accusing the U.S. of trying to erase Israeli responsibility for her death.

A U.S. investigation concluded that Abu Akleh was likely killed by Israeli fire, but also said there was “no reason to believe” she was deliberately targeted. Israel says Abu Akleh was killed during a gun battle with Palestinian militants, and it is unclear who fired the deadly shot. The Palestinians say Israel intentionally killed her.

The White House declined to comment on the letter or the family’s request for a meeting during his visit.

The letter we wrote isn't published yet. We will post it here soon.

14-Aug-18: Chasing (some) terrorists in Jordan

Image Source: Twitter account of Jordan's royal court

A significant clash between the forces of the king and what are being called a terrorist force happened on Saturday across the valley from us over in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

It all started, as far as we know, with an explosion at a Jordanian music festival on Friday. First reports - like this one from an English-language Arab source, were careful to tiptoe around the possibility of terror:

A vehicle belonging to the Jordanian gendarmerie was hit by an explosion on Friday evening, leaving one sergeant dead and wounding six other security personnel, an official at the General Directorate of the Gendarmerie has said. The blast happened just outside the capital Amman, where the unit was tasked with guarding a cultural festival held in the western outskirt of the city. Local news media quoted government sources denying the blast was linked to terrorism, however, investigations are continuing... Local media quoted security sources as saying that "a gas bomb exploded near the fuel tank, causing the explosion of the vehicle". The Fuheis festival is an annually held event in Jordan and is considered the second largest festival in the country after the Jerash Festival... Fuheis is a Christian-majority town, around 20km northwest of the capital Amman. [The New Arab (UK), August 11, 2018]

Pretty soon, the story got darker: turns out it was a bomb that 

was planted under a police vehicle providing security at [the festival]... No group immediately took responsibility... Prime Minister Omar Razzaz portrayed Friday's bombing as a "terrorist attack"... Jordan is a close Western ally in a turbulent region, and has largely been spared from the conflicts in neighboring Syria and Iraq. However, the kingdom has also been targeted by Islamic militants, both domestic and foreign who have carried out a series of attacks... [Associated Press]

Fuheis (or Fuhais or Al Fuheis) is about 20 kilometers north-west of the capital Amman. The Fuheis Festival has been held annually for the past 25 years and is considered Jordan's second-largest cultural festival. Wikipedia says the town has 20,000 residents, 60% of them Greek Orthodox Christians. It's in the Wadi Shueib (Valley of Jethro) area, between Salt and Amman.

A place with a historical heritage ["Is Al-Salt Set to be Jordan’s Next UNESCO World Heritage Site?"] Salt, also called Al-Salt, happens to be where the security forces made up of "special forces", police and the army carried out a raid on Saturday. And where things seem to have gotten badly out of control. Salt had 97,000 inhabitants in 2006: 65% of them are Muslim and the remainder Christians.

Image Source: Where the ISIS people had their base - till Sunday

Newly appointed government spokeswoman Jumana Ghneimat said the security forces we just mentioned were pursuing a "terrorist cell". Here's a summary of what Agence France-Presse reported ["4 security force members, 3 'terrorists' killed in Jordan raid"] on Sunday:

• Quoting not its own reporters but the Jordanian government, it says: "Four members of the Jordanian security forces and three "terrorists" have been killed during a raid on a militant hideout after an officer died in a bomb blast near the capital..."
• Making clear Jordan now tied the raid to what had happened in Fuheis on Friday, it said "Five suspects were also arrested during Saturday's raid in connection with the home-made bomb that exploded under a patrol car at a music festival."
• According to Ms Ghneimat, "The suspects refused to surrender and opened heavy fire toward a joint security force". They "blew up the building in which they were hiding, and which they had booby-trapped earlier".
• The three security forces who were killed died in the shootout with the gunmen. A fourth died later of his injuries.
• The bodies of three terrorists (AFP puts that word in quotation marks) were found in the rubble of the exploded building as were some automatic weapons. Five militants (AFP's word) were arrested in the operation.
• AFP quotes "medical sources" saying 11 people "were wounded during the raid, including members of the security forces and civilians who were residents of the building where the militants were hiding". They included women and children. The AFP report has no details of who thhey were, their ages, or the extent of their injuries.
• Now this interesting direct quote based on something said by a "security official who asked not to be named": "All the terrorists who were killed or arrested were Jordanians and residents of Salt."
• The king, Abdullah II, is quoted saying Jordan would "strike mercilessly and forcefully" against whoever they are blaming which is not yet specified. "This cowardly terrorist act, and any act that targets the security of Jordan, will only add to our unity, strength and determination to wipe out terrorism and its criminal gangs". 
• And this intriguing comment from the recently appointed (see "New Jordanian cabinet has fresh faces but same old problems", The National, June 14, 2018) prime minister Omar al-Razzaz: Jordan will "not be complacent in the hunt for terrorists".

How firmly does King Abdullah actually run things in the kingdom? You get a sense of this from a recent comment by the sober and generally respected Deutschewelle news service:

Since the king calls the shots on all policy issues, it is unclear what mandate Razzaz will have to take measures to pacify the protesters ["Jordan's king appoints Omar Razzaz as new prime minister to defuse protests", DW, June 5, 2018]

On the other hand, how well that's going can be surmised by how many prime ministers the king has appointed and then replaced. Since he was crowned on June 9, 1999, Abdullah II has hired and fired 12 prime ministers, not including the new man, Mr Razzaz. They have served, on average, for less than a year and a half each. (We did the calculations from public records.) The economy is perhaps the most visible sign of how much of a challenge Jordan's managerial class have on their hands: see "'We simply can't take this': Jordanians vow to continue protests after PM resigns" [Middle East Eye, June 5, 2018]

Monday night brought this update:

Jordan said Monday that a terror cell targeted in a deadly weekend raid by security forces was composed of supporters of the Islamic State terror group and shared its extremist views. Saturday’s raid, during which three jihadists were killed and five arrested, revealed that they were preparing a series of attacks in Jordan, Interior Minister Samir Mubaideen said... The suspects “were not part of an organization but followed its takfiri (Sunni Muslim extremist) ideology and supported Daesh... All of them were Jordanians... The raid also foiled other plots to carry out a series of terrorist operations against security installations and public gatherings,” he said. ["Jordan says jihadists killed in raid were Islamic State supporters", AFP, August 14, 2018]

Reuters added:

• Also quoting al-Mobaideen, it says the "militants... did not belong to a specific group but subscribed to Islamic State ideology... There were plots to wage a series of terror attacks that sought security points and popular gatherings. We know the targets but we won’t tell them so people won’t get terrified”... 
• [T]here were no signs so far they had foreign links, Mobaideen said, refusing to give names of suspects. “The investigations are secret and ongoing,” he told a news conference
• Alongside automatic weapons in the suspect’s possession, the authorities found a location where chemical ingredients for manufacturing explosives were buried, Mobaideen added.
• The militant cell was recently set up and there were indications its members had embraced radical ideology. “What is dangerous is that these new recruits are more impulsive than those with experience in executing operations that harm Jordan’s security,” [head of the Gendarmerie] Hawatmeh told reporters.
• "Intelligence officials and some experts believe widening social disparities and a perception of official corruption are fuelling a rise in radicalization among disaffected youths in a country with high unemployment and growing poverty."

A report from a Palestinian Arab source ["Jordanian King Abdullah II vows to eliminate terrorism", Ma'an News Agency, August 12, 2018] datelined Amman says:

The Jordanian King Abdullah II released a statement on Sunday, vowed to end the existence of terrorism, following a deadly terror attack in the town of al-Salt, Jordan. [He] stressed that this cowardly act of terrorism and any action aimed at the security of Jordan "will only increase unity, strength, and determination to eradicate terrorism and its criminal gangs."

What's actually going on behind the official statements and media releases? It's genuinely hard to know. Jordan doesn't have a free and enquiring media and much of what emanates from official sources is spin. A Jordan Times article yesterday shows (probably inadvertently) how that works:

Spokesperson of the Ministry of Political and Parliamentary Affairs Sami Mahasneh told The Jordan Times over the phone that a meeting with the minister and heads of political parties had been concluded with "unanimous agreement upon the government’s media strategy". He announced that a new platform dubbed “It’s Your Right to Know” is being developed by the government to issue around-the-clock news, which he said "will hopefully put an end to all false news and deal with sensitive ones in a delicate manner"...
Bayan Tal, senior advisor at the Jordan Media Institute, told The Jordan Times that this approach is "indeed noticeable" in the new Razzaz government. "There is a gap of trust between the government and the citizens when it comes to news. This is a result of the past governments’ way of dealing with the media and it is what leads citizens to often turn to rumours or unofficial news outlets for information, rather than the government's press release, as proven by studies,” Tal said... The competition between news agencies should not push them to commit immoral and disgraceful acts just to get views, likes, and comments, as those are “not the values of a true journalist”... ["Officials warn against false news ‘igniting national fear’", Jordan Times, August 13, 2018]

We actually do have things to say about how the "values of a true journalist" operate in Jordan. See

• 27-Apr-18: If it really means to tackle radicalism, the Kingdom of Jordan should extradite Ahlam Tamimi to the US
• 23-Jan-15: What's said in London stays in London: Jordan's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't war on terror
• 10-Dec-14: In the Arab world's most promising new journalism school, a passion for murder and hatred

and especially

• 11-Dec-14: Is it newsworthy when journalists make a terror-addicted murdering colleague their role-model?

Now seems like a perfect time for the Jordanians to show how firmly they oppose Islamist terror by handing high-profile Islamist terrorist and Jordanian media celebrity Ahlam Tamimi over to US law enforcement authorities as they are obliged to do under the 1995 Extradition Treaty between the two countries.

31-Jan-18: There's now a $5 million reward for bringing the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to justice

The English version of yesterday's announcement. It also appears in
Arabic here.

Established in 1984, Rewards for Justice, a program of the US State Department has the goal of bringing

international terrorists to justice and prevent acts of international terrorism against U.S. persons or property... Since the inception of the Rewards for Justice program in 1984, the United States Government has paid more than $145 million to over 90 people who provided actionable information that put terrorists behind bars or prevented acts of international terrorism worldwide. [The program's website]

Federal criminal charges were announced last March against Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the 2001 Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria massacre. Our daughter Malki, 15, was one of the people, mostly children, killed in that Hamas-driven terror outrage. Tamimi described herself as Hamas' first woman agent.

If you follow our blog, it won't be news to you that Tamimi has been living a celebrity's life in Amman, Jordan since her extorted release from an Israeli prison cell in the 2011 Shalit Deal. She was the only one of the 1,027 terrorists freed in that catastrophic transaction who was sent into "exile" in Jordan. Since she was born in Jordan in 1980 and lived in Jordan, getting her education there until a couple of years before executing the Sbarro attack and went back to living in Jordan today with a cousin who is now her husband, it's not really exile and never was.

There is one practical result of the decision to send her to Jordan that's worth noting: as we wrote earlier this week:

No fewer than 420 of the 1,027 let loose in the Shalit Deal are again engaged in the satanic work of doing more terror. 210 of the 1,027 have already been re-arrested by the IDF. Some 100 are currently back in the Israeli prison system...  ["29-Jan-18: Freeing unrepentant terrorists and the horrors it has brought"]

Tamimi is as active as ever representing Hamas and inciting to more terror. On any view, she is an active terrorist again and therefore is in breach of the terms of the condition that attached to her commutation of sentence and everyone else's in the Shalit Deal: go back to terror and your sentence is reinstated. But unlike almost all the other Shalit Deal beneficiaries she lives in Jordan where the Hashemite Kingdom identifies with her and shields her. Bottom line: Israel cannot touch her.

We have campaigned to have the US step up its efforts, first announced in Washington on March 14, 2017, to have Jordan hand her over to the US authorities so that she can be brought before a judge in Washington to face trial.

It's beyond doubt that Jordan has had an extradition treaty with the United States since 1995 ["26-Jul-17: We listened carefully to Jordan's foreign minister and we have 10 questions"] and that Jordanian citizens have in fact been extradited to the US within its framework.

Jordan now formally denies that the signed treaty is valid and in effect ["20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"].

The full-size Arabic language reward poster
can be downloaded from here

The US does not agree with Jordan on this, and says the treaty is in effect, that it is perfectly valid and that Jordan should just hand her over.

Tamimi was named to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list that same day last March. There are currently 28 terrorists on the list. None of them was added to it later than 2013 except for Tamimi. (About this, we're not drawing any conclusions.) And none of those wanted terrorists is hiding in Jordan. For that matter, neither is Tamimi though it's where she lives and principally operates when she's not traveling around the Arab world on celebrity visits and pro-terror rallies.

Which brings us to yesterday's important and welcome announcement ["Information that brings to justice | Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi | Up to $5 Million Reward"] made in Washington:

The Rewards for Justice Program is offering up to $5 million for information leading to al-Tamimi’s arrest or conviction for her role in this [Jerusalem Sbarro] attack, as part of the 1993 Violence in Opposition to the Middle East Peace Negotiations reward offer... Hamas has been designated by the Department of State as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under the Immigration and Nationality Act and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entity under E.O. 13224. [Source]

So how hard will it be to track down this confessed murderer?

Not as hard as you might imagine. Within Jordan, for reasons worth pondering, she's not thought of as a jihadist felon at all but more as a national hero of "resistance". To illustrate: she shared a prominent speaking platform just a few weeks ago in Amman with no less than a former Jordanian prime minister and several current and former national level politicians. [The details are in our post: "05-Jan-18: In Jordan, the FBI fugitive Ahlam Tamimi (among others) pays tribute to her slapping/taunting/kicking Tamimi cousin"].

Note that this occurred nine months after the United States called on Jordan to comply with its long-established treaty obligations going back to the Clinton Administration, and to hand her over to them for prosecution on some of the most serious charges that ever arise.

To some people, it will seem like a pungent message, even an insult, to the US from its heavily-dependent Jordanian client and partner in the battle against terrorists that Jordan said - and has stuck to saying - "no".

What might the Rewards for Justice development now do? Well, the Amman bureau chief of Associated Press had no difficulty arranging an interview in Tamimi's Amman home last March, filming a video clip (to our fury, we are in it too) that was then posted to YouTube. Many additional media organizations, among them Aljazeera, have managed to somehow find her and give her coverage and publicity in the past 9 months without struggling to locate her home. She might even be listed in the phone directory. Our understanding is she has not been in hiding at any stage since re-establishing herself in her Jordanian homeland in October 2011. And still is not.

We have questions about how the new reward works, including how it's going to be advertised. We have shared some of our concerns with the US authorities about aspects of the hard road to here and what's ahead. But we will save those matters for another time.

08-Oct-17: Why kill religious Jewish children? Because, says Hamas celebrity-jihadist, this is a religious struggle

▲ "And from here [in Ramallah, on August 9, 2001 in the middle of the day] we started the operation..." [that led a couple of hours later to the murder of 15 innocent people, most of them children, all of them Jewish]

We're posting this here and now because the Arabic-speaking world is currently in the grip of a spate of Arab media articles defending, supporting and celebrating the murders done by Ahlam Tamimi, the woman who masterminded the murder of our child. In fact, they're protesting the very notion that Tamimi is now wanted by the FBI. (Here's one of many examples from the past three days.)

The self-confessed murdering jihadist, interviewed by the ever-eager media (take a bow Associated Press and Al Jazeera) has lately been responding to their questions by saying she's innocent, she did nothing wrong, she's shocked that the American authorities, the Department of Justice, the FBI are going after her "for no obvious reasons".

(Those are all direct quotes. Don't just trust us. Check.)

There's an unusually large body of readily-accessible video material in which Ahlam Tamimi, the sociopathic Hamas terrorist, boasts of the murders she executed, reinforcing again and again that she has no regrets and why should she.

Here are some screen shots from just one: it's available via YouTube [here] for anyone wanting to see the whole clip.

▲ "Izzedine al-Masri [the human bomb whom she personally brought to the central Jerusalem site she had chosen to destroy] asked me just one question..."

▲ "I had been to the area before [meaning she had scouted central Jerusalem during the previous week for target-rich sites]..."

▲ [And so] "I knew there  was a Jewish religious school near there..." [making it an ideal target for a bombing]

▲ "That was his question and I said yes, there are religious Jews there, and also other people..."

▲ "[Why did he ask?] Because the base of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is a religious struggle..."

The video from which these images were extracted is "For the Sake of Allah", produced by the Center for Near East Policy Research headed by investigative journalist David Bedein. 

The words are those of Ahlam Tamimi who spoke them in Arabic. In the years that have gone by, no one has pointed to any problems in the Arabic-to-English translation. (Such alleged problems are a popular strategy for defenders of the Palestinian Arab terrorists.) They are, and ought to be taken as, an accurate reflection of what this self-confessed murderer says is her motivation.

For the past 16 years, Ahlam Tamimi has had ample opportunity to state her case publicly. Far from denying any of the mass-murder charges against her, she has basked in the glow of the adulation they have brought her. Those killings are what made her famous, have given her a great, well-funded life, have granted her the status of a pan-Arab celebrity, have made her one of Jordan's precious national treasures and the Tamimi clan's idol. And, for its youngsters, their role model.

To suggest that terrorism like the murderous kind she so proudly practices and encourages is all about "occupation" and "territories" and "national rights of the Palestinians" is to ignore what this deeply and violently hateful woman says to anyone who will listen. 

Don't ignore what she recently said to Al Jazeera [here on March 23, 2017]: 

"We only wanted freedom for our country, not to kill Israelis or others for the sake of killing," 

but realize it's contradicted by other well-documented public standpoints of hers like the one in the paragraphs above. Her pretensions to having noble motivations are cynical and purely for effect. 

Be aware of some of her better-known public statements, like this one broadcast on Al-Aqsa TV (operated by Hamas, whom she has faithfully served since 2001) on July 12, 2012

"While I was sitting on the bus, the driver turned on the radio. But first, let me tell you about the gradual rise in the number of casualties. While I was on the bus and everybody was congratulating one another, they said on the radio that there had been a martyrdom attack at the Sbarro restaurant, and that three people were killed. I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped for a larger toll. Yet when they said 'three dead,' I said: 'Allah be praised.' ...Two minutes later, they said on the radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I just couldn't. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding. They didn't even know that I was among them. On the way back [to Ramallah where she was due to read the news on the Istklal TV station that evening], we passed a Palestinian police checkpoint, and the policemen were laughing. One of them stuck his head in and said: 'Congratulations to us all.' Everybody was happy."

Only wanted "freedom"? 

Didn't want to kill Israelis? 

What actually drives this woman is not so hard to figure out.

In reality, Ahlam Tamimi is as guilty as sin.

08-Apr-17: Swedes struggle to understand Stockholm vehicle-ramming killings

Stockholm aftermath [Image Source]

In Sweden, flags are flying at half-mast today (Saturday) to express shared grief at the killings of four innocent and unsuspecting people yesterday afternoon. Fifteen more were injured.

Around 3:00 pm Friday, a stolen beer-delivery truck driven by a masked man hurtled directly into a crowd of shoppers on Stockholm's busiest shopping street, Drottninggatan, before ploughing into the side of the Åhléns mall. The truck caught fire and the driver fled on foot, eventually trying to get onto a subway and then a bus, evidently bleeding all the way according to this Swedish news report.

All the while, the city was in lock-down; public transport was shut down and the city center was paralyzed by police and security forces activity. Swedish government offices, situated a block from Drottninggatan, approximately 700 meters from where the attack took place, were evacuated [Aftonbladet].

The Swedish authorities are, naturally enough, calling it a terrorist attack.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, a 39-year-old man from Uzbekistan was arrested after a police operation in Märsta, a suburb of Stockholm near Arlanda airport. Swedish public broadcaster SVT said a second man, linked to the first, was arrested later in the northern suburb Hjulsta. Writing about the main suspect, Aftonbladet says:

In his social media accounts the man has expressed positive views of the terror organisation IS, and also ”liked” a picture on Facebook of bloody victims taken seconds after the explosion at the Boston Marathon in April 2013. One of the man’s acquaintances..: ”He has four children and works in construction... He never speaks about politics or religion, the only thing he talks abut is getting more work so that he can send more money to his family”...

A Reuters report from Saturday afternoon says:

"Nothing indicates that we have the wrong person, on the contrary, suspicions have strengthened as the investigation has progressed," Dan Eliasson, head of Sweden's national police, told a news conference on Saturday. The man, detained on Friday night on terrorism charges after the attack in the heart of the capital, appeared to have acted alone but "we still cannot rule out that more people are involved," he said... Police did not name the detainee, but said he was from the central Asian republic of Uzbekistan and that he had seemed peripheral in intelligence reports. "We received intelligence last year, but we did not see any links to extremist circles," Sapo security police chief Anders Thornberg said. Eliasson said there were "clear similarities" to an attack last month in London in which six people died, including the assailant who drove a hired car into pedestrians on a bridge. Vehicles have also been used as weapons in Nice and Berlin in the past year in attacks claimed by Islamic State.

Daily Mail UK, quoting Swedish media reports, says today that police investigating the attack have arrested six more suspects after three were bundled out of a car and police raided a property 12 miles from the attack scene.

Saturday evening the police stopped a car on the island of Kungsholmen, a central part of Stockholm, and detained three persons in connection to the attack. Police had to smash the window on the driver’s side of the car and at least two of the persons in the car were wrestled to the ground by police wearing plainclothes. [Aftonbladet, April 8, 2017]

The loss of life in the attack could easily have been much greater. Bomb disposal experts are reported to have found an improvised explosive device packed into a suitcase inside the hijacked beer truck. In Daily Mail's words:

The discovery of the bomb points to a planned terror attack rather than an opportunistic attack. It is not known why the IED failed to detonate. 

According to Associated Press:

The prime minister urged citizens to "get through this" and strolled through the streets of the capital to chat with residents... [But] many in Sweden were shocked by the attack, questioning whether Swedish society — considered democratic and egalitarian — had failed in some way.

BBC points out that

Sweden is believed to have the highest number of Islamic State group fighters per capita in Europe. About 140 of the 300 who went to Syria and Iraq have since returned, leaving the authorities to grapple with how best to reintegrate them into society.

Developing.

31-Mar-17: Tamimi, our daughter's grinning, boasting, convicted murderer, now says she's innocent

The opening scene of the March 22 interview video [Click to view]

The woman who masterminded the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria on August 9, 2001 and who was subsequently tried, convicted and sentenced after confessing to all 15 counts of homicide is now, finally, the subject of a United States warrant for her arrest and extradition to the US.

Jordan, where she has been living freely since October 2011, has had an extradition treaty with the US since 1995. But starting two weeks ago, it claims the treaty has no effect... for reasons no one should take seriously. (And which the United States does not accept.)

Ignore the specious legalities. Jordan refuses to hand her over to the US because she is a national hero to the Jordanians, 70% of whom are Palestinian Arabs.

To state that more clearly: she's a Jordanian and Arab hero not because she is innocent (no one seriously claims that) but because she did plan and she did carry out the killings of Israelis. That's what makes her many supporters so proud.

Most of the people she killed were children. All were Jewish; the majority were religiously-observant Jews. None of this is coincidental. It was central to the killer's plan.

Our daughter Malki who was 15 years old was among those blown to pieces.

The woman's name is Ahlam Tamimi. She confessed to the murders in court when charged by Israel in 2003. She then confessed again and again and again on television, on the social media, in press interviews, at every opportunity. She has never stopped confessing. It is a core element of her persona. As a person who for more than four years hosted her own prime time television program recorded in Amman, Jordan, and beamed by satellite to every part of the world where there are interested Arabic speakers, she has had unprecedented opportunities to boast of her murders in public.

Image Source: "03-Aug-15: The triumph and the 

silence: A killer's fame and what it reveals about her world"

We think there might never have been another person anywhere in the history of mankind who has boasted as much as she has to so many onlookers and listeners and readers about being the mass murderer of innocent people.

But this week she stopped, at least for a moment. She has decided she's innocent.

Here's what happened.

Associated Press sent a team to interview Tamimi in her home in Amman last week. (The details we leave for another time. We have lodged a bitter complaint with AP.)

AP has just posted to YouTube the raw video of that Tamimi interview here. They did it quietly and with no announcement, certainly not to us, and almost no one has noticed. It has gotten fewer than 50 views as of now (4:00 pm Friday Israel time).

Look at just the first two minutes. There's no English translation in the raw video. But with the help of native-Arabic speakers, we're told this is what the FBI fugitive is saying:

"The court ruled for not extraditing me to the US. Of course I'm happy, that was my first reaction, because I didn't do anything, and the charges filed against me by the US are not true, I know nothing about them and I never did that. The Jordanian decision [not to extradite] was true, because the court in Jordan asked the US to send the whole file of the lawsuit but it didn't do that." [Tamimi, interviewed by AP on March 22, 2017]

Shortly after that, she says:

"When we carry out defensive operations in Palestine we don't target children, but they are there normally, I will never ever kill a child deliberately, but they are there." [Tamimi, interviewed by AP on March 22, 2017]

Image Source: Video: Released Hamas Terrorist Ahlam 

Tamimi on Palestinian Public's Delight at Suicide Bombings

So to be clear: she clearly now wants to thought of as innocent, she didn't do anything and she knows nothing about the charges against her. You can see her saying that literally in a major interview published a week ago by Al Jazeera. We reported and criticized it here: 24-Mar-17: Our daughter's smiling killer: "Shocked" that US "decided to go after her for no obvious reason".

On the other hand, there's no shortage of videos showing Tamimi boasting of systematically selecting a site (i.e. Sbarro) that attracts crowds of children; of the joy she felt at learning how many lives she had extinguished; about the rising pleasure of the people sitting with her as she fled the scene in a Jerusalem-to-Ramallah Arab taxi who were thrilled at the news of a growing death toll coming in over the radio about the massacre... and what a battle she faced to not admit to them that she was the bomber.

Since early 2012, we have been trying to get her behind American bars (our daughter Malki was one of the two US citizens killed in the Sbarro attack), we have grown familiar with how the truth gets bent into unrecognizable shapes and how this gets enabled. Tamimi's new denials, which we assume she intended as an answer the FBI's charges against her and not about the actual murders, will cause some part of the global public to have doubts about her culpability. That's of course especially true in her home base, the Arab world. We've learned such things don't just happen. They're made to happen. It's an aspect of cognitive warfare.

Why do we allow this to be so easy for them? Can anyone recall a previous instance of a convicted murderer, an FBI fugitive, being granted a global media platform to spread poisonous, self-justifying views? Is there something about Islamist terror or the generations-long Arab-on-Israeli warfare that explains it?

[For our previous posts about Tamimi, click.]

UPDATE Sunday, April 2, 2017: See Frimet Roth's take, via her blog: "Falling victim to the media's "most ethical" behavior"

24-Mar-17: Our daughter's grinning killer is shocked the US is pursuing her and for no obvious reason

Tamimi is crowded by admirers at Amman airport on the day

she was flown back to Jordan after being freed from Israeli prison

in the 2011 Shalit Deal

This is about a stunning article  authored by Ali Younes and published by Al Jazeera in Arabic on Wednesday and in English yesterday (Thursday).

What they have done is put out an entirely uncritical account of a vicious, boastful convicted murderer's version of why she should be left alone and not have to face justice. She bombed a pizzeria fiilled with children, having checked ahead of time to see that it would be filled with Jews. School-age Jews. Preferably religious.

The reporter does not challenge a single one of this fugitive-from-the-FBI's claims.

Some concerned people have written to us to say it really amounts to a sick tribute to her hideous achievement. We certainly see it that way. George Orwell would have understood and probably been in awe of what's on display below.

In the text that follows, we have interspersed our own comments (in black) with the English version of the Al Jazeera article as published (in purple). We use yellow to emphasize the parts we don't want you to miss.

Ahlam al-Tamimi: 'We only wanted freedom'

Al Jazeera speaks to freed Palestinian prisoner, wanted by the US for helping in a Jerusalem cafe bombing 16 years ago | Ali Younes | @ali_reports |

Amman, Jordan - Ahlam al-Tamimi, 37, never imagined that the quiet life she led for several years in Jordan would be turned upside down when the United States Department of Justice filed criminal charges against her demanding her extradition from Jordan and placing her on the FBI's most wanted list.

Our comment: She was freed via an extorted commutation of sentence. Israel was extorted by the Hamas terrorist regime which illegally held captive and incommunicado an Israeli combatant, Gilad Shalit, for five years, eventually trading him for 1,027 convicted Arab terrorists imprisoned by Israel. Tamimi was one of them. Not a single prisoner received a pardon. Instead, their sentences were conditionally commuted - with the conditions including an undertaking never to engage again in terrorism or incitement to terrorism. 

Tamimi was serving 16 life terms after confessing to being the mastermind of the Sbarro pizzeria massacre, an especially sickening and horrific terror attack that targeted children and woman. Tamimi was the one who did the actual targeting and, as she has boasted repeatedly, picked the target with great care. She brought the bomb by bus and taxi from a PA-controlled town in the Samaria district into Jerusalem. That bomb was a young newly-religious fanatic from well-to-do family: not poor, not uneducated, living neither in misery nor despair: a human bomb. He was equipped with an explosive-laden, purpose-built guitar case on his back surrounded by a large number of nails to magnify the flesh-ripping effect. Tamimi walked him to the central Jerusalem intersection where the Sbarro pizzeria stood at the time and where, after giving her enough time to flee to safety, he exploded while standing next to our 15 year-old daughter and her closest friend, the 16 year-old daughter of our neighbours. Both girls, and 13 other innocent victims, were killed. About 130 others, many of them on the street outside the pizzeria, suffered life-changing, often horrendous,  injuries. 

Tamimi explicitly breached the conditions of her commutation-of-sentence almost from the first day after her release. Under the terms of the release she is obliged, if Israel can re-capture her, to go back to prison and complete her 16 life terms. Does all of this entitle Tamimi to what the article calls "quiet life"? But wait, it gets worse.

In an interview with Al Jazeera at her home in the Jordanian capital, Amman, Tamimi said that her ordeal with the US extradition request started last September when she was arrested by the Jordanian branch of Interpol while she was driving to visit her parents. After spending one night in jail, she posted bail and started her legal fight against her extradition through Jordanian courts, which ended last Tuesday, seven months later.

Our comment: Who is "the Jordanian branch of Interpol"? They probably mean the Jordanian police. Interpol doesn't have its own police. Instead it connects police forces around the world by means of information and co-ordination. And that's an ordeal? For a convicted, confessed mass murderer? Taken into custody for a single night and then released? Knowing something about the kind of extremist values Al Jazeera espouses, we shouldn't be surprised by the undisguised way this reporter spins the interview. But it's infuriating to us to see how seriously they are taken as a credible source of news and analysis.

When asked why she thinks the US government decided to go after her after all these years, and after she was tried, convicted and served time in Israeli jails, she said: "I was really shocked at the American behaviour.

Our comment: The claim that she's shocked is laughable. Her post-2011 high profile terror incitement activities make her liable to re-imprisonment by Israel. We assume that's why she has never ventured further than certain parts of the Arab world in the past 6 years: to Algeria, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Tunisia and Yemen. And if she's not aware of Title 18, United States Code Section 2332a(a)(1) which prohibits using a weapon of mass destruction against a US citizen outside the US then she should. She's a journalist and nowhere near as naive as she now pretends to be. Also: she should get better lawyers.

"The US government, who is always trying to solve the problems of the world, especially in the Middle East, has decided to go after one woman for no obvious reasons."

Our comment: No obvious reason except for her having murdered US citizens and proudly confessed to her sickening crimes.  

Tamimi on Kuwaiti TV, June 2012: Invented casualties [Image Source]

In 2013, the US government filed under seal a criminal complaint against Tamimi based on her assistance in an August 9, 2001, bombing of Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two American citizens. The criminal complaint was unsealed publicly last week.

Our comment: An assistant? No, she planned and masterminded the massacre. In dozens of TV, press and social media interviews since walking free, she has highlighted her key role, not hesitating to exaggerate her achievements and make up explosions that never happened when that suits her. For instance, in a June 2012 interview on Kuwait's Iqraa TV channel [archived here] she explained her work with Hamas:: "I was assigned three missions. The first mission was to spot locations suitable for Jihadi operations. I would go to Jerusalem and walk around in the areas frequented by the Zionists... I would surveil suitable locations... I would submit reports to the cell commander and this report would be studied... My second mission was to carry out Jihadi operations. I was assigned this mission. I would take explosive devices... I learned how to operate one of those explosive devices, and I took it to a supermarket..." She then goes on to claim that the supermarket - the Co-op Supermarket that was located in the basement of the Mashbir department store on King George - "completely exploded. At the time, the Israelis said that nobody had been killed or wounded... it was normal for them to conceal the number of casualties, in order to avoid panic among the Zionists." In reality, no one was injured or killed, and while the basement was damaged, the rest of the building - a Jerusalem landmark until it was substantially gutted and renovated this year - was undamaged and intact. She's inventing things to enhance her standing.

Federal prosecutors accuse Tamimi of having agreed in the summer of 2001 to carry out attacks on behalf of the military wing of the Palestinian Hamas movement and having travelled with the restaurant bomber to Jerusalem. Prosecutors say that she instructed the bomber to detonate the explosive device, which was hidden in a guitar, in the area.

Our comment: Accuse her? She doesn't deny any of this. You can hear her tell it over in her own words on a variety of different websites. For instance, in that same 2012 Kuwaiti TV interview, she begins with this: "I was a journalism student... and I was working in the media and the press. This allowed me to become a member of the Palestinian Journalists Union. The union card enabled me to enter Jerusalem in order to conduct interviews. This drew the attention of the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades. They realized that I could enter and leave Jerusalem, without the knowledge of the Zionists... This made them ask me to join the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, and I immediately accepted." The Brigades are the operational arm of Hamas' terrorist activity.

Tamimi told Al Jazeera that she never knew that American nationals were killed in that bombing. She also said the Israeli government never mentioned that during her trial. "The first time I ever knew that Americans were killed was when the Interpol in Jordan told me about the charges filed in the US against me," she said.

Our comment: We don't know what she knew or didn't know. But as a journalist with a lot of time on her hands during her eight years in a wired, well-facilitated Israeli prison, not knowing after all these years that there were American victims is unlikely. Also: it makes no difference to her criminal culpability. It's utterly irrelevant.

Tamimi believes the complaint was a result of pressure from US-based pro-Israel groups. "These groups have somehow been able to steer the US government to go after me...

Our comment: Wrong. We, the two of us, began our pursuit of her via the DoJ in early 2012, three months after she walked free from her Israeli cell. No, we're not US-based. And yes, we are pro-Israel. 

...even after I was convicted and spent many years in Israeli prisons."

Our comment: The massacre took place on the afternoon of August 9, 2001. She was arrested in September 2001 when she was 21 years old. She pleaded guilty to all charges at her trial in June 2003 and was sentenced in September 2003 to 16 terms of life imprisonment. She was released in October 2011. Sixteen terms of life imprisonment would be "many years in Israeli prisons". What she served was not.

This is the woman who says she wants to put it all behind her.
The "it" that "was great" is the slaughter of Jewish children including
our 15 year old daughter Malki. Does the Al Jazeera guy know this?
Certainly.

Last year, Jordanian lower courts handed her legal victory when it rejected the US request on the ground that the US-Jordan extradition treaty signed in 1995 was unconstitutional because it was never ratified by the Jordanian Parliament.

Our comment: There's much to say about this claim, all of it critical and mostly dismissive. Maybe later. 

Suffice to say for now that in a monarchy where the king changes prime ministers and governments more often than some presidents change their suits, there's an inherent problem in paying so much respectful attention to a constitution. Jordanian law and what is legal and illegal depends on one individual. If they wanted to extradite her, she would be in the US today. 

And let's note that a variety of Jordan versions have emerged of what its courts ruled and when, and what its constitution says. A clear picture we're certainly not getting. They say whatever they need to say.

We received a formal response from the DoJ in Washington this week stating its official view. They say the Extradition Treaty between the US and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was signed on March 28, 1995 in Washington DC. This, please note, was followed by the exchange of instruments of ratification on July 29, 1995. In the DOJ's view, the Treaty entered into force that same day and continues in force. It is listed in "Treaties in Force: A List of Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States in Force on January 1, 2011," the Department of State's publication that that provides information on treaties and other international agreements to which the United States has become a party and which are carried on the records of the Department of State as being in force as of the stated publication date. 

In simpler words, the US which is the other party to a two-sided agreement (and arguably Jordan's most important friend and backer in the world) has no doubt, and for the record, that the treaty between them is fully in effect. 

But that's not the whole story. 

The DoJ told us that on January 25, 1997 - more than two decades ago - the Jordanian Court of Cassation (evidently the same court that ruled the treaty ineffective this past Monday) held that the Treaty was unconstitutional. That was said to be because Jordan had not submitted the Treaty to its parliament for endorsement. And in the twenty years since then, Jordan's parliament has still "not approved the Treaty" in the language of the DoJ letter to us. 

So why is the same question being presented to what we are told is Jordan's highest court over and again? 

And who is presenting the other side - the argument that Jordan can and must extradite. 

We may never find out but we are trying. But clearly the Jordanians, for whom Tamimi is a national (meaning Palestinian Arab) hero, won't be offering any clarification. 

On Monday, Jordan's Supreme Court agreed with the lower court's decisions making her extradition legally impossible for Jordan. "All of the Jordanian courts agreed with our position to reject the American request because it was illegal according to Jordan's constitution," Hikmat Rawashdeh, Tamimi's lawyer, told Al Jazeera.

Our comment: So if the higher Jordanian court agreed with the lower Jordanian court and both say Tamimi cannot be extradited, who appealed from the lower court which is itself a court of appeal? And whose decision, about what, is being appealed?

About Mr Rawashdeh, Tamimi's lawyer in these recent proceedings, here's something that Wikileaks knows about him: "The defendants' lawyer [in another earlier case] Hikmat Rawashdeh argued during his closing remarks that, "Most Jordanians wish to fight Americans and Israelis and I am one of them. Should I be punished for this intention? If this is the case then the authorities should punish the entire Jordanian population." [Source: Wikileaks from March 2006] We can surely rely on him to tell us the truth, right Aljazeera?.

"The constitution bars extraditing any Jordanian citizen without the due process of the law or proper extradition request, which was not done by the American side," he added.

Our comment: Maybe yes, maybe no. Certainly Aljazeera's clever reporter didn't express a view on that or consult any other experts. Our experience is the Department of Justice people are competent lawyers and know how to fill in forms. 

The reference to "due process" from a Jordan-Palestinian mass murderer is a sad joke. 

We learned from speaking with the American law-and-order people with whom we have been in steady contact for some years that there have been several extradition requests made to the Jordanians over the years. One succeeded - the case of a fugitive called Eyad Ismoil, extradited to the US in 1995. Ismoil, who like Tamimi and about 70% of the Jordanian population considers himself a Palestinian, drove a bomb-laden truck into the parking garage of the World Trade Center in 1993. That bombing attack killed six people and injured more than 1,000. The U.S. District Judge hearing the case ordered Ismoil to pay more than $10 million in restitution "just to make sure that you never make a dime out of this."

Rawashdeh also said that Jordan's constitution prevents prosecuting an accused person with the same offence twice, similar to the "double jeopardy" clause in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.

Our comment: Double jeopardy has no application in Tamimi's case - we have heard this from a string of legal experts. She is being charged in a different country on different charges.

Al Jazeera asked the US Justice Department for its reaction to the Jordanian court ruling and whether the US government would review its extradition treaty with Jordan or renew its demand for extradition. "As a matter of policy, the Department [of Justice] generally does not comment on extradition-related matters," Peter Carr, a spokesman for the US Justice Department wrote in an email to Al Jazeera.

As a result of Jordan's Supreme Court decision, Tamimi is no longer wanted by the Interpol in Jordan. She is still, however, a wanted person internationally by Interpol and could face arrest should she travel outside Jordan.

Our comment: We're checking with Interpol. But this is probably true. Once the Jordanians told Interpol their law did not allow for Tamimi's extradition, Interpol had nothing more to do.

Tamimi was a 20-year-old college student when she was arrested in Israel and pleaded guilty during her trial. She was sentenced in 2003 to 16 life terms in prison for her role in the bombing. She said that after her arrest, she was held for 43 days, during which was subjected to physical and psychological torture.

"I was subjected to cruel treatment by Israeli jailers, and was never allowed to even have proper hygiene or make contact with family or have access to a lawyer," she said.

After spending 10 years in Israeli jails, during which she was rarely allowed to talk to her family, Tamimi was freed from prison in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas.

Our comment: Some prisoner exchange. Shalit was kidnapped and held hostage - a war crime - for more than five years by Hamas. He was denied visits from the Red Cross; was not allowed to communicate with family members (to which he was entitled under the Geneva Conventions).The Shalit Deal, consummated in October 2011, resulted in prisoners collectively responsible for 569 Israeli deaths, including Tamimi, walking free. Tamimi's deprivations, if not entirely invented, are trivial by comparison with Shalit's. And if she complained about them to the Red Cross or to one of the many accessible and sympathetic Israeli lawyers, it remained a secret. Which is not what we believe. Telling the truth comes hard to this woman. 

She said she was in utter shock that the US government decided to go after her, insisting that she committed no crimes against the US government or on US soil, or that she tried to kill US citizens intentionally.

Our comment: Tamimi's shock again: she's being poorly advised on how US law works. Or pretending that there's some merit to her contentions. There's none.

Tamimi said she witnessed many of her friends and fellow students killed in "cold blood" by the Israeli army.

Our comment: We have yet to hear of an Islamist terrorist who does not justify his or her atrocities by referring to vaguely described Israeli actions.

Evidence that the murderer has been more frank
in previous interviews

In 2000, the Palestinian occupied territories were engulfed in a bloody uprising called the "Al-Aqsa Intifada" against the Israeli occupation. Between the years 2000 and 2005, Israeli forces killed 3,136 Palestinians while 431 Israelis were killed by Palestinians. "From a Palestinian, as well as international law perspective, it is perfectly legitimate to resist the Israeli occupation," she said. "We only wanted freedom for our country, not to kill Israelis or others for the sake of killing."

Our comment: Tamimi masterminded an armed assault - with a bomb - on a child-filled pizzeria timed to happen on a school vacation afternoon, having looked for one that attracted large crowds of children and their mothers at that hour. She wants us to understand that this was about freedom. Freedom for which country? Does Hamas - which sees itself in a religious conflict - even claim to want to create a country? She denies killing Israelis for the sake of killing, but her actions then and since demonstrate how insincere and false her denial is. 

That she didn't want to kill Israelis is a bald-faced lie that persuades her backers. She has said publicly - and been praised for it in the demonic circles from where her support comes - that she wanted to kill Israelis, she wanted to kill religious Jews, that she wanted to kill children. She sought a Jerusalem location where she could achieve these goals. The Sbarro pizzeria on that hot afternoon supplied everything she sought.

The self-serving nonsense of "we only wanted freedom" comes directly from the Islamist terror playbook. It works; headline writers love it and it's a great fig-leaf when your real position is indefensible. 

About the freedom of our daughter Malki and all the others whose lives were terminated or tragically damaged by the woman who "never wanted to kill", we simply don't ask. The answer is obvious. 

Since her release from Israeli jails, Tamimi said she has tried to put the past behind her and tries to have a normal life for and her husband. Soon after her release from jail, she got married to Nizar al-Tamimi, 44, a relative, who spent 19 years in Israeli jails for killing an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank and was released at the same time as Ahlam.

Our comment: Tamimi wants to put the past behind her? That's understandable - but absurd. She recounts the past and her glorious role in it at every opportunity for audiences of millions of people and on this, she is convincing. She has said explicitly and repeatedly that she regrets nothing; she would do it again. She glories in the fame and adulation she gets for her murders from every part of the Arab world (we're willing to provide evidence to anyone who wants). She has said she feels no sympathy for the Israeli children she murdered or their families. She said it again today to Associated Press - see their fawning interview with her here. 

She was asked, immediately after reaching Jordan in October 2011, whether she would do it the same way, on the same huge scale, if she could go back in time. Her response [here] ought to be engraved in cement: "Of course. I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not. This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad for the sake of Allah [nothing to do with national liberation or resistance - it's religious warfare for her and her fellow Islamists], and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were [at the Sbarro pizzeria]? This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That’s out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner." Clear enough?

So what exactly is it that Al Jazeera thinks she wants to put behind her? This woman's life is the polar opposite of someone who is trying to get past the savage, hateful crimes of her younger years (she's now 37). She will say whatever advances her cause at that moment and for that audience. 

Why didn't the clever reporter from Al Jazeera ask her to comment on the normal life that Malki so much wanted, and all the other victims? Or whether she feels regret or understanding or sympathy or a deeper understanding. But the Al Jazeera tribute isn't about truth. It's about getting honoring a woman who is already on a pedestal for getting away with murder and satisfying the blood-lust of an entire society.

"I would like the American people to look at the case against me as an unjust case and speak out to stand with me and the truth," she said. "I want to lead a normal life, continue my education and raise a family. All l want now is for the US government to just leave me alone."

Our comment: We're the parents of one of her murdered victims and it's unbearable for us to listen to the sickening cynicism of a completely unrepentant killer who escaped punishment and complains that the prosecutorial case against her was unjust. The only aspect that is unjust is that she is alive and free.

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We tweeted yesterday about Al Jazeera's shameless tribute to an unrepentant killer of children. Addressing the reporter, Ali Younes, we wrote:

He hasn't bothered responding.