13-Feb-23: Three thousand five hundred days of thwarted US justice

Jordan's refusal to extradite Ahlam Tamimi to the United States, despite her being responsible for the horrific 2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria that killed 15 people, including two Americans (one of them our daughter Malka Chana Roth), is a clear breach of the 1995 extradition treaty signed - and in effect since that time right up until today - between the two countries. 

The US Department of Justice brought charges against Tamimi in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on July 15, 2013. That's 3,500 days ago as of today. 

At the US government's request, those charges were immnediately sealed by the court once they were signed off. This meant they were kpt secret.  

They remained secret - even from the families of the victims of the atrocity, which includes Frimet and Arnold Roth who co-write this blog - for the following four years. 

They were eventually unsealed on March 14, 2017, in a Washington media announcement that featured tough and principled language by determined American law enforcement officials. 

But just six days later in Amman's Court of Cassation, a Jordanian judge handed down a decision declaring the long-active 1995 Jordan/US extradition treaty invalid. 

As Aljazeera reported, the decision meant Tamimi's extradition to face charges in Washington for her role in the Sbarro bombing was permanently blocked under Jordanian law. This was a contentious finding and one plainly contradicted by facts that we ourselves later discovered by suing the State Department of the United States in a 2012 suit pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. (Two requests made by us under FOIA had earlier gone unanswered.)

The basis on which Jordan's Court of Cassation - the kingdom's most senior appellate court - relied is not some inherent flaw in the treaty. It pointed instead to a flaw created by Jordan itself. It's a flaw that relates to the ratification of the treaty, an essential step in the treaty-making process for both sides. 

The United States has been clear at all stages that the treaty was ratified by Jordan and that Jordan communicated that ratification to Jordan. But even if that's wrong (and the evidence plainly shows that it's not wrong), Jordan has had more than a quarter century to fix the alleged flaw. In fact, it's a flaw only Jordan can fix but has chosen not to fix. That said, it's not too late: everything that needed to be done to render the 1995 treaty valid and binding under Jordanian law could be done this afternoon. Or tomorrow.

For obvious reasons, that isn't going to happen. 

Jordan's leaders needed the long-standing treaty to be non-biding on them once the hot-potato Tamimi case landed on their desks. The court ruling gives them an easy way out of a difficult bind. Tamimi is hugely popular in Jordan ["24-Nov-18: How Jordan's mainstream media showcase a couple of role-model jihadist murderers"] and the idea of Jordan handing her over to US law enforcement officials, which is what they have done time and again when facing previous American extradition requests, is hard to do.

We said the court ruling made things easy for Jordan's leadership. But that's only true because the US has shown incomprehensible patience with its Jordanian ally. In the years since the charges were handed down in 2013 by a US Federal court, there is not a single instance of any US official publicly calling on the Jordanians to honor their treaty obligation. This is unprecedented.

Given the importance of the US-Jordan relationship and the heinous nature of the crime for which Tamimi faces charges, the US Congress should years ago have insisted that the Administrations (first Obama, then Trump, then Biden) remind Jordan of its treaty obligation to extradict Tamimi. The fugitive terrorist, murderer of innocent Americans, must be sent to American justice. Congress and the White House should do it today. But they haven't and they don't.

For its part, Jordan has failed to take any steps to rectify this situation, despite the obvious harm it causes to the victims and their families. Jordan continues to flout its obligations with impunity right up until today.

As the parents of one of the American children murdered there that day, we have repeatedly - and fruitlessly - called on US politicians, diplomats and officials to act. It's been an agonizing process.

By failing to act as it has since 2017 when the charges and Jordan's disgraceful recalcitrance became part of the public record, the US Congress has been derelict in conveying a vital message: that the lives of American citizens are precious and neither treaty obligations nor justice are matters for cheap political posturing by the Jordanians. 

If there is another way of looking at this, no senior American public figure has stated it. The United States must take action to ensure justice is served for the victims of this heinous crime. The Jordanian government, which receives more foreign aid than any other country, must be held to account for its shameful breach of the 1995 treaty. 

It is already years late. But not too late for members of the US Congress to finally stand up for US justice. Nothing can justify allowing Jordan to dishonor its legal and treaty obligations in the Tamimi case and for there to be no US push-back. The dishonor and the disgrace have gotten a blind US eye for far too long.

-- 

Please consider expressing your support for justice in this searing case by signing the petition at change.org/ExtraditeTamimi.

20-May-22: Jordan's king takes Washington again as we try to get our pursuit of justice noticed

Jordan's Washington embassy published

this proud tweet [Image Source]

Jordan's King Abdullah II spent all of last week in the United States. 

It was a visit filled with events including a solemn ceremony in which America's Catholic hierarchy paid homage to His Majesty and his wife for Jordan's "religious tolerance, harmonious interfaith, overall peace, and humanitarian efforts". 

Also: top-level meetings in the Congress involving various committees of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. And a lot of media ["Biden reaffirms Jordan's role overseeing Temple Mount", Associated Press, July 13, 2022]

Our own sources inform us that the Tamimi issue came up. But only tangentially and never once reported in the news.

From Jordan's standpoint, the peak achievement was a well-publicized face-time session in the Oval Office with America's chief executive. Here's the White House's official summing-up of the discussions between the two leaders: 

Readout of President Biden’s meeting with His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan

MAY 13, 2022 | President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. met today with His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan and reaffirmed the close and enduring nature of the friendship between the United States and Jordan.  Jordan is a critical ally and force for stability in the Middle East, and the President confirmed unwavering U.S. support for Jordan and His Majesty’s leadership.  The leaders consulted on recent events in the region and discussed urgent mechanisms to stem violence, calm rhetoric and reduce tensions in Israel and the West Bank. The President affirmed his strong support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and cited the need to preserve the historic status quo at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. The President also recognized the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s crucial role as the custodian of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. The leaders discussed the political and economic benefits of further regional integration in infrastructure, energy, water, and climate projects, with Jordan a critical hub for such cooperation and investment.  They agreed to remain in regular touch and further enhance the historic ties between our countries.

Not surprisingly in view of how things have gone so far with the Biden administration, Jordan's harboring of America's most wanted female fugitive was left off the agenda. 

So too Jordan's ongoing breach of the Clinton-era Extradition Treaty that since 1995 has enabled the US to request and get the arrest and handing over of Jordanian terrorists for trial and imprisonment in the US.

How well did all of this go for the Hashemite Kingdom? Spectacularly well. The post-visit video published by its embassy in Washington has the highlights along with a stirring musical sound track:

The images in the video clip of happy Congressional figures including Senators and Representatives, their advisers, senior officials, as well as key figures in the State Department and the White House make for hard viewing if, like us, you're pressing many of those same people to stand up for American principles, values and laws in order to persuade an extremely well-funded minor state in the Middle East to comply with a binding treaty that no one outside Jordan regards as invalid in any sense.

July 13, 2022: Jordan's king, the heir apparent and their Oval Office friend

As heads of state go, Abdullah is one of Washington's most frequent visitors. This source lists more than forty such visits since he ascended to the throne 22 years ago. 

In June 2020 as the COVID pandemic was raging, there was an incredible blitz of behind-closed door, off-the-record video-conference "briefings" (that's the word the Jordanians use) inside the Congress to leaders and committees. See our lengthy post "26-Jun-20: Private meetings with His Majesty and the injustice they conceal" that is accompanied by numerous photos that have somehow never gotten into the news media. 

Then in July 2021, he spent three weeks in the US including another Oval Office visit. A lower-profile visit to New York took place in September 2021 (video) including a behind-closed-doors off-the-record meeting with America's most senior Jewish community leaders. 

King Abdullah meets Senators John Thune, Mitch McConnell

and Chuck Schumer at the US Capitol May 13, 2022 [Getty Images] 

Plainly the royal team know the scene and advance his agenda with distinction.  

As we wrote here ["26-Apr-22: New legislation seeks to hold Jordan accountable for failure to send the Sbarro bomber for trial in Washington"], some Congressional efforts are underway to impose sanctions on Jordan for its failure to respect the long-standing treaty. This is being brushed off in certain quarters of the US capital ["01-May-22: A Congressional initiative sanctioning Jordan gets some Arab lobby attention"]. But in parts of the media - including some Jewish parts - it's getting modest attention.

Over at the blog of the formidable Elder of Ziyon, there's an interview published earlier today by Varda Meyers Epstein (who writes under the nom-de-web Judean Rose) in which Arnold Roth gets to do some venting about the frustrations of trying to get get justice for a murdered child. It's here: "Rep. Greg Steube Wants Congress to Push Back at Jordan on Thwarted Extradition (Judean Rose)". And for anyone wanting to acquire a sense of what we face - and the miserable public figures who are responsible for the protracted nature of our battle to see justice done - it has some insights we hope will interest you.

Here's one of the numerous well-crafted questions Varda asked me in our Elder Of Ziyon exchange, with my response.

Varda Epstein: There has to be a sense of betrayal that Israel released your daughter’s murderer from prison, especially since you threw in your lot with the Jewish State by making Aliyah. Your wife is American. Does she feel a sense of betrayal as an American citizen at the lack of will to push for extradition? How does it feel to be doubly betrayed, so to speak?

Arnold Roth: That’s a hard question to answer. Not because I don’t feel those things but because complaining of being betrayed doesn’t go down well or get you far in the court of public opinion. People have a hard enough time with their own problems.

So first about Israel. Yes, we have certainly been betrayed. That’s the right word: we had rights and they were and are being cruelly trampled and with no regard to what this does to our values as a society. Or to people like us.

In this, we are not alone. The same thing can be said by all the other families who experienced the murder or maiming of loved ones by terrorists who were sentenced to long prison terms by judges applying very respectable judicial criteria and then watching as the convicts walked triumphantly free.

That should never have happened. Those who argue differently need to review what they think they know about justice and Jewish values.

But it’s clear to us that Israel as a nation didn’t betray us. It was politicians. There’s much more I would want to say about that aspect but not now. We remain as Zionist as the day we arrived in Israel, passionate and proud to be raising our children and grandchildren in the Jewish homeland.

I’m not an American. But Malki was and so are my wife and children.

Did the US betray us? No, and this is a good moment to say that we get gratifying support from wide parts of American society. But as with Israel, the politicians – except for those who have shown a distinct sense of morality and honor – do what politicians do and hurt us in heartless ways.

From conversations with US government officials, we have the sense – never said to us in this way – that there’s more interest in seeing Ahlam Tamimi slip away and somehow disappear into the desert than in having her stand trial in Washington.

This is not a partisan political thing; we are almost, though not quite, as infuriated by how the GOP has pushed past the Jordan/Tamimi issue as we are by the Democrats. Again, this isn’t about which side of the US divide you stand on.

Much of America’s Jewish community leadership has been unhelpful and cold. Having said that, it’s an exceptionally painful subject that I don’t want to address here. At some point we will because there’s much we have learned on this that we would have preferred never to know. And people ought to know.

Here’s what I want to say about the US government. Other than at the political leadership level, the Justice Department and the FBI have always given us the sense of being with us and wanting the same result we want – Tamimi in a federal court on trial for her terrorism and the deaths she caused. We sincerely appreciate the hard work that has kept the pursuit of the Sbarro bomber going all these years.

This is relevant to something that happened some weeks ago when Frimet and I met with a significant US government figure (hereafter SUSGF). And here’s the only part of it worth raising in today’s interview. We were told ahead of time by our own sources that SUSGF was going to receive a briefing before our sit-down from well-connected officials in Washington. But in speaking with us for an hour or so, SUSGF volunteered half-way through that he/she skipped the briefing. Hence our mild hope of getting some insight into why we have been treated as pariahs for so long by the government of which our murdered child was a national was misplaced. We learned nothing. The experience was a waste of everyone’s time.

There’s no point in sharing my feelings about the governments of the past. But here’s a thought about the current administration.

Speaking in July 2021 during the first of the three official visits to the US made by King Abdullah in the past ten months, President Biden called Jordan “loyal and decent friend… We’ve been hanging out together for a long time. It’s good to have him back in the White House.”

The same day those comments were reported in the New York Times, Frimet and I wrote an open letter to President Biden. It was published prominently in the Wall Street Journal:

The president, a grieving parent himself, pledged during his inauguration speech to write “an American story of decency and dignity.” Is anything more dignified than doing justice? What’s decent about an ally shirking a treaty to appease popular bigotry?

That question is still on my mind. And again, no response has ever come from the White House.

We also wrote a private letter to Secretary of State Blinken six weeks earlier, in July 2021. He has never answered.

Naturally we hope you will read and share the whole thing.

Just ahead of the latest King Abdullah visit to Washington, we put out a media release of our own that had less impact than we hoped - but we're glad for what we did get. 

Here's how the Australian Jewish News reported it today:

Roths pressure monarch | "Ahlam Tamimi's obscene, ongoing freedom in Jordan has to be on the agenda of every meeting the Jordanian monarch is granted." | By PETER KOHN | May 20, 2022

Arnold and Frimet Roth have thrown their support behind draft legislation in the US Congress to compel Jordan to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, a terrorist involved in the bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria that claimed the life of their Australian-born daughter Malki 21 years ago.

Click to enlarge

The Roths have publicly endorsed a bill by Congressman Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, which would commit Congress to recognising Jordan has an extradition treaty with the US. Malki, 15, was a US citizen through her American-born mother.

The couple’s endorsement coincided with a visit to Washington by Jordan’s King Abdullah II last Friday to meet with US President Joe Biden over a Jordanian bid to increase the Waqf presence on the Temple Mount after recent unrest, a move rejected by Israel, which has sovereign jurisdiction there.

Tamimi was charged with terrorist crimes by the US in 2013 and is on a list of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists. The bill proposes penalising Jordan if it does not extradite Tamimi. Said Steube, “Our US tax dollars will not continue to flow to a country harbouring a Hamas terrorist with American blood on her hands.”

Jordan maintains its extradition treaty with the US was never ratified, but the Roths cite documentation contradicting this.

Tamimi, one of the bombers of the Sbarro pizzeria in 2001 which killed 15 and injured 140, served part of a sentence in Israel but was extradited in a prisoner swap to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas. She is now a Jordanian media personality and remains unrepentant about her role in the attack.

“Ahlam Tamimi’s obscene, ongoing freedom in Jordan has to be on the agenda of every meeting the Jordanian monarch is granted,” Arnold Roth said of King Abdullah II’s US visit.

Roth told The AJN this week that attempts to engage the Australian government through Prime Minister Scott Morrison and predecessor Malcolm Turnbull have so far yielded “frustratingly disappointing outcomes”. He added, “At this point, Frimet and I have stopped knocking on their doors.”

That last paragraph is not quite what Arnold said. It's a condensed version of how he expressed it in communicating with the reporter. Space is a heavier issue in paper-based publications than online. Here's the full (but unpublished) text of Arnold's comment to the AJN: 

It's likely that most Australians, including the Jewish community where we lived before we made aliyah and where Malki was born, will not see this as an issue on which they can play a constructive role. 

But that's not the case. The decision to be decisive is of course one that has to be made by the Americans. But we think it will help if the recalcitrant Jordanians know the world is watching as they keep the fugitive bomber safe and famous in Amman. 

Australia, for good historical reasons, has warm relations with the Hashemite kingdom. That's what brought me to write an op ed in The Australian, five years ago this week in fact, calling on the then-prime minister to in effect have a quiet word with King Abdullah. Mr Turnbull's answer was a very welcome one but the follow up by others in his government was not. The initiative ended up falling by the wayside. 

For the past two years I have made similar efforts with the current Australian leadership via the prime minister's team and DFAT [Australia's foreign ministry] - with frustratingly disappointing outcomes. At this point, Frimet and I have stopped knocking on their doors.

Our pursuit of justice goes on. We hope you decide to be with us.

26-Apr-22: New legislation seeks to hold Jordan accountable for failure to send the Sbarro bomber for trial in Washington

From our Twitter time-line

The US Congressman at the heart of a welcome initiative we described here some four weeks ago ["30-Mar-22: Lawmakers to Secretary of State: What measures are available so that Sbarro bomber is extradited to Washington?"] has just made an important announcement.

Important, that is, to those - like us - who want to see US justice finally catch up with America's most wanted female fugitive. That's the confessed bomber of the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria, a Hamas terrorist zealot who brags of the children whose lives she ended. One of those children was our daughter Malki, a US national, murdered in the Sbarro atrocity at age 15.

Here's the text of  the media release [archived] that Congressman Greg Steube's office issued yesterday.

Steube Introduces Legislation to Hold The Government of Jordan Accountable for Failure to Extradite Hamas Terrorist

April 25, 2022 | Press Release

WASHINGTON— U.S. Representative Greg Steube (R-Fla.) recently introduced The Recognition of the 1995 Jordan Extradition Treaty with the U.S. Act to limit U.S. assistance to Jordan until the Government of Jordan recognizes the validity of the 1995 extradition treaty between the two countries.

"Our U.S. tax dollars will not continue to flow to a country harboring a Hamas Terrorist with American blood on her hands," said Congressman Greg Steube. "The Government of Jordan is failing to comply with a 1995 treaty which requires them to extradite individuals like Ahlam al Tamimi who faces trial for terrorism under U.S. law. My legislation will ensure our foreign assistance to Jordan is abruptly halted until Jordan is in compliance with our extradition treaty."

The U.S. and Jordan signed a Memorandum of Understanding on U.S. foreign assistance to Jordan which committed the U.S. to providing $1.2 billion per year in bilateral foreign assistance over a five-year period for a total of $6.3 billion between 2018 and 2022. This MOU represents a 27% increase in the U.S. commitment to Jordan above the previous agreements.

Ahlam al Tamimi lives freely in Jordan despite orchestrating a horrific 2001 terrorist attack in Israel which killed 15 innocent people, including two American citizens, and injured 122 others. Ahlam al Tamimi is on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s Most Wanted Terrorist List. 

The text of the bill itself (here at 117th Congress, 2d Session, H. R. 7527) was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives on April 14, 2022. 

The language of the proposed law notes that the Extradition Treaty between the governments of the US and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was signed at Washington on March 28, 1995. It entered into force on July 29, 1995. The US view is that it is clearly still in effect.

As we noted a month ago [here], Jordanian fugitive terrorist Ahlam Tamimi has lived a public life - undisguised and in full view of Jordanian society and its media - throughout the years that the US has been pursuing her. She has never been in hiding, not even for even a day. And she has been regularly interviewed, has given speeches, has written opinion columns throughout that time. Despite all of this, the multi-million dollar State Department Rewards for Justice prize on her head remains in effect, never yet paid out to anyone. No part of the US news industry has ever raised any questions about this. But we have and we do.

From our own tracking of events, we know Jordan - via its various diplomats and officials - has avoided addressing the treaty and Jordan's breach of it in any direct way. It has preferred instead to allow a decision of its Court of Cassation from March 2017, less than a week after the US charges against Tamimi were unsealed in Washington, to speak for itself.

One notable exception to that policy of ostentatiously ignoring the breach of a bilateral agreement with its most significant ally is a speech in Arabic, never reported in any US media, made by Jordan's then and present foreign minister and deputy prime minister. 

We wrote about it a day later in an open letter to US-educated Ayman Safadi, a key Jordanian insider. The following brief extract is from "13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister":

...You and virtually the entire political leadership of Jordan have been careful to avoid all public mentions of the embarrassing and self-humiliating way Jordan harbors the confessed Sbarro bomber and FBI Most Wanted fugitive terrorist Ahlam Tamimi.

More than most people, and related to what we lost in the Sbarro atrocity, we know how willing you are to discuss Jordan's disavowal of its treaty obligations to the US in private meetings about which we have gotten reports. And how unwilling you are to talk about this important issue in public.

It is quite a balancing act.

You might recall how we tried to draw out your response in an article we published more than two years ago, addressed like this current post, to you personally: "26-Jul-17: We listened carefully to Jordan's foreign minister and we have 10 questions".

And as you may remember, you ignored us totally. (So did and do your staff.) 

Special mention of Jordan's ambassador to Washington who right up until today blocks us on Twitter. We assume this is what feeling really embarrassed about an issue will cause even a polite and cultured person like Ambassador Dina Kawar to do...

Congressman Steube initiated a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on March 23, 2022. Concerning the Tamimi case, it asks meaningful questions and was co-signed by ten additional Members of Congress. All of them are from the GOP side of the Congress. Do we have concerns about this? You bet we do. ["19-Apr-22: To our friends in the Democratic Party"]

So far as we are aware, no response to Mr Steube's letter has yet been received by his office.

19-Apr-22: To our friends in the Democratic Party

Twitter is where much of our messaging appears these days. It has lots of advantages - you can say things briefly, it gets immediate attention, the audience is large. But once your tweet appears, it's often a matter of a few days at most and sometimes just hours before the attention and the audience move on.

Last week, we posted a thread of tweets that addressed supporters of the Democratic Party. The introduction said this:

We're not involved in US political life. We don't favor GOP over Dems or vice versa. And as parents of a murdered American child, we know our fight for justice is non-partisan. But if you stand with @TheDemocrats, please take 2 mins to read the heartfelt appeal in this thread:

The thread got gratifying attention. 

But it's an important message, one which so far has not attracted any response at all from the people we especially want to reach: the decision-makers among US Democrats. So here it is as a blog post.

____________

To our friends in the @TheDemocrats:

The extradition of @Sbarro monster, @FBIMostWanted fugitive #AhlamTamimi, has been blocked for years by Jordan. It obscenely opposes US efforts to prosecute her and says the 1995 extradition treaty obliging them to hand her over is invalid.

/2

The Sbarro pizzeria is where our daughter Malka Chana Roth was murdered along with many other innocents, most of them children, in a 2001 Hamas outrage spearheaded by Jordanian fugitive Ahlam Tamimi. Click for background.

____________

But it is valid. #Tamimi doesn't deny her key role in the murder of our daughter Malki, 15. Since 2012, my wife and I have pressed the relevant parties to end this charade and get the fugitive into @FBI custody. That we haven't succeeded isn't for lack of trying. 

/3

Malki's fresh grave, the day after her murder. Beside it, the grave of

her closest friend Michal [Image Source: Getty Images]

____________

To our dismay, the @StateDept keeps wanting what we want - #Tamimi in US court facing US justice as US law requires - but says it via what we view as pointless mantras... while routinely praising and rewarding Jordan at every opportunity. Clearly something's wrong.

/4

____________

In the past four months, helped by devoted allies, we asked Members of Congress to sign a letter asking fair and respectful questions about this. It's published here: https://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2022/03/30-mar-22-lawmakers-to-secretary-of.html

It's one of the few ways we can draw US gov't officials' attention to the injustice.

/5

____________

There's nothing about the murder of our child and the other American victims in the @Sbarro massacre that ought to divide Americans. This can't be a partisan issue - not if justice means anything. And yet not a single Democrat lawmaker consented to sign. This stuns us.

/6

____________

We also reached out to prominent Democrat figures who aren't in Congress. We have no wish to embarrass them but they could hardly have been less helpful. We're now afraid @TheJusticeDept effort to bring #AhlamTamimi to US justice is becoming a US domestic football. 

/7

____________

We must not let that happen. Doing justice is a sacred mission. But if half the US political spectrum is acting as if it's opposed but never saying so, that's alarming. We ask you to stand up and support this important cause. And we're asking your voters to sign our petition:

/8

Screen shot source: The New York Times, July 19, 2021

____________

To express support and to stand with us as we keep urging the government of the US to explain to Jordan what the 1995 treaty requires it to do, please sign here: change.org/ExtraditeTamimi

Together we will make this happen.

* * *

If you know people who are decision makers in the Democratic Party, people who have a passion for making justice happen, we would very much appreciate you passing our message along to them. Thank you.

30-Mar-22: Lawmakers to Secretary of State: What measures are available so that Sbarro bomber is extradited to Washington?

There is a $5M US government reward

for "information" on Tamimi [Source]

A letter from members of the US House of Representatives and delivered to Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week addresses the way Jordan, which is bound by a treaty obligation to the US, continues to fail to extradite the Sbarro bomber.

Congressman Greg Steube led the effort. He has served as the U.S. representative for Florida's 17th congressional district since 2019. 

On March 24, 2022, he posted the letter below to his Facebook page along with this brief explanation:

Ahlam Ahmad Al-Tamimi orchestrated a horrific 2001 massacre in Israel which resulted in the deaths and injuries of several American citizens. To this day, she remains free in Jordan. I sent a letter to Secretary Blinken to request what steps the State Department is taking to extradite this Hamas terrorist and bring her to justice for the lives she took.

Here's the text -

March 23, 2022

The Honorable Antony J. Blinken
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C St., NW
Washington, DC 20520

Secretary Blinken,

On August 9, 2001, a Jordanian citizen Ahlam Ahmad Al-Tamimi, the first female operative in the ranks of the federally designated terrorist organization Hamas, orchestrated a horrific massacre at a pizzeria in Israel’s capital. Among the 15 murdered in the bombing were two U.S. citizens, Malka Chana Roth, 15, and Judith Shoshana Hayman Greenbaum, 31 and pregnant with her first child. A third US citizen, Joanne Chana Nachenberg, remains to this day in a persistent vegetative state. Among the approximately 122 maimed were four U.S. citizens.

Al-Tamimi was apprehended by the Israeli authorities and tried on terror charges. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 16 consecutive life terms but was released along with 1,026 other convicted terrorists in an extortionate deal Israel was compelled to make in 2011 with Hamas to secure the release of a hostage, Corporal Gilad Shalit. She returned to Jordan where she was born and educated.

At no time has Al-Tamimi, who has referred to the attack as “my operation,” evinced remorse or regret for the barbarism she perpetrated. When asked by a Jordanian reporter in an October 2011 interview whether, if given the chance, she would do the same thing again, she replied: “Of course, I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not! This is the path… 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.” Asked in another interview if she was aware of how many children had been killed in the bombing, Al-Tamimi replied, “three?” The interviewer said it was eight; the horrifying look of delight and satisfaction on her face are captured in a widely shared video clip.

Al-Tamimi’s return to Jordan was that of a triumphant, home-grown heroine. Feted as a celebrity-icon, she soon became the presenter of a weekly, made-in-Amman television program called “Breezes of the Free.” Starting in March 2012 and for the following five years, this attracted a global Arabic-speaking audience whom she treated to a mix of advocacy for Palestinian Arab terror and adulation for its perpetrators.

Al-Tamimi remains free in Jordan up until the present day. Frequently appearing in both conventional and social media in the kingdom and throughout the Arab world, she is a figure of malign influence that by American standards of decency, justice, or morality, would be inconceivable. This extraordinary freedom haunts the bereaved families of the victims of Al- Tamimi’s savagery, including the Americans among them.

On March 14, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint and arrest warrant for Al-Tamimi. She faces trial under a U.S. federal law enacted to fight international terrorism and to hold terrorists and co-conspirators accountable for their heinous actions: 18 U.S.C. § 2332(a). The Federal Bureau of Investigation then added her to its Most Wanted Terrorists List and the U.S. Department of State (State Dept.) Rewards for Justice program announced a $5M reward for information about the fugitive.

Two years later, a letter from our colleagues to your predecessor, Secretary Pompeo, raised concerns about thwarted U.S. efforts to see Al-Tamimi extradited from Jordan under the 1995 treaty binding the two countries. In April 2020, an additional letter by our colleagues asked the Ambassador of Jordan Dina Kawar regarding the ongoing miscarriage of justice and the need for redress by extraditing Al-Tamimi to stand trial in the U.S. To the best of our knowledge, there was no reply from the Embassy of Jordan, only acknowledgment that they saw the letter.

Despite U.S. efforts in the Al-Tamimi case, Jordan has refused to implement the 1995 U.S.- Jordan Extradition Treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate on July 29, 1995. That refusal comes despite the clear and solemn commitment of King Hussein, the father of the present king, in a formal communication made in the name of his kingdom on July 13, 1995 and delivered to the State Dept. stating that:

…having reviewed the Extradition Treaty signed in Washington on March 28, 1995… [we] do hereby declare our agreement to and ratification of that Treaty in whole and in part. We further pledge to carry out its provisions and abide by its Articles and we, God willing, shall not allow its violation.

A month later, Jordan-U.S. relations went through a significant escalation with the extradition to the U.S. of a Jordanian fugitive, Eyad Ismael Najim, wanted in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The Naim case was subsequently followed by the extradition of additional Jordanian nationals sought by the U.S. on terror charges.

The State Dept. continues to list the 1995 treaty in its authoritative Treaties in Force compendium. Notwithstanding the salutary warning given by the late King Hussein 22 years earlier and despite years of honoring U.S. requests under the treaty, Jordan’s Court of Cassation ruled just a week after the 2017 unsealing of terror charges against Tamimi that the strategic treaty with the U.S. was invalid owing to a failure to ratify. The State Dept. has explicitly disagreed with the judicial ruling which, we note, was silent about the clear statement of ratification issued over the signature of King Hussein.

With these background factors in mind, we respectfully request your response to the following questions:

1. Is it the State Dept.’s view that the request for Tamimi’s extradition satisfies U.S. law and the requirements of the 1995 treaty?
2. What measures does the State Dept. consider to be available should Jordan persist in failing to comply with the extradition request?
3. Has the State Dept. considered, or will it consider imposing sanctions on Jordan if the lawful U.S. request to extradite Tamimi continues to be disregarded?
4. Has Jordan given the U.S. reasons different from or additional to the reasons stated by its Court of Cassation for the disputed assertion that the 1995 treaty is invalid?

We request your attention to these important matters and look forward to receiving your timely and considered reply within 30 days.

Sincerely,

The letter is signed by the following lawmakers:

* * *

Ahlam Tamimi (often called Al-Tamimi) was born and educated in Jordan and lives there today. Her father spent his working life as a soldier serving in the Jordanian army. 

After being freed (a conditional commutation of her sixteen life-terms prison sentence) from an Israeli prison in October 2001, she returned to Jordan and a lengthy series of parades, speeches, public appearances and wall-to-wall adulation that has gone on for years. Starting in October 2011 and continuing until late-2016, she traveled widely and often to address audiences throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Her wedding in the summer of 2012 to another Palestinian Arab terrorist (her cousin) called Tamimi who was himself freed in the same Shalit deal, received lavish media coverage: "22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it".

Between February 2012 and September 2016, her weekly television program "Breezes of the Free", produced in Amman, Jordan and beamed from there via the Hamas satellite network, attracted a global audience to her unique brand of incitement to more Arab-on-Israeli terror and adulation for those who do it.

In an earlier initiative two years ago, one in which the Washington-based Endowment for Middle East Truth took a collaborative role, Congressman Steube wrote to Jordan's then and current ambassador to Washington, Her Excellency Dina Kawar, addressing the imperative of Jordan complying with its obligation to extradite the alleged bomber:

...We believe it is of the highest importance to US/Jordan relations that an outcome is found that honors Jordanian law while ensuring this unrepentant terrorist and murderer of innocent Americans is brought to US justice. Extraditing Tamimi within the framework of a long-standing, effective treaty is a powerful statement that Jordan will not tolerate terrorism nor its promotion. We reaffirm our appreciation for His Majesty King Abdullah II and his inspirational leadership and look forward to the further flourishing of our mutually important alliance. We respectfully await your response. [Full text of the 2020 letter here]

No response, as far as we know, was ever received by Congressman Steube's office from Jordan's Washington embassy.

October 2021: From the safety of her Jordanian base,

Ahlam Tamimi takes part in an Istanbul conference for women and

girls, delivering a tribute to her own career as a religion-inspired
killer of Jews. It's still viewable on YouTube. 

Half a year ago, Tamimi appeared in public as part of a video conference accessible via YouTube, exhorting others - notably teenage girls - in remarkably candid terms to engage in the kind of terrorism for which she has become notorious and about which she admitted in clear terms ["23-Feb-22: Weaponizing Turkish teenage girls: What the Sbarro bomber did next"].

In late 2021, she was named to the Counter Extremism Project's list known as "The Top 20 Most Dangerous Extremists Around the World".  The details and background are here: "27-Feb-22: The Jordanian woman who bombed Sbarro has earned another title". 

Since March 2017, she has been one of two females on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list. Twenty five individuals in total are currently on that list. 

And since early 2018, the US State Department's Rewards for Justice program (tag line: "Secure a safer world and a brighter future") has offered 

"up to $5 million for information on Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi, also known as “Khalti” and “Halati,” as part of its 1993 Violence in Opposition to the Middle East Peace Negotiations reward offer".

Though Tamimi has lived a public life - undisguised and in full view of Jordanian society and its media throughout the period that the US has pursued her, never in hiding for even a day and regularly interviewed or giving speeches or writing opinion columns - the multi-million dollar offer remains in effect and presumably has never been paid out to anyone. 

No part of the US news industry has ever raised any questions about this. But we have and do.

23-Feb-22: Weaponizing Turkish teenage girls: What the Sbarro bomber did next

Tamimi's Istanbul audience in October 2021:

Eager young Islamist women and girls, anxious
to know about killing Jews

She has been called the most wanted woman in the world. Here, for instance. 

But in America's news industry, there is little sign of interest in the life and doings of Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi. This is surprising. And also a real shame.

What she does and how it's perceived in the Arab world would surprise, perhaps even shock, many if they knew.

Tamimi, our daughter's killer, is a Jordanian who lives in a modern apartment in her country's capital, Amman. She has a masters degree in journalism and was the presenter of her own successful TV show for some five years. 

Adoring tributes to her appear on Aljazeera and much of Jordan's mainstream media as well as in major social media including Facebook and Instagram. Her op-eds are published on Arabic-language news sites and the BBC featured her in an absurdly sycophantic news report in 2020. 

The innocents she murdered are never mentioned in any of those articles. 

Shrewd maneuvering by the Hashemite Kingdom's leadership has enabled her to stay safely out of the reach of US government law enforcement efforts. That's at the heart of what we write here.

HER OPERATION

Tamimi became a fugitive from US law enforcement when the Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint and arrest warrant against her on March 14, 2017. She faces trial in Washington under a US federal law [18 U.S.C. 2332a - Use of weapons of mass destruction] that criminalizes acts of terror involving a weapon of mass destruction outside the United States and - the key provision - whose victims are Americans. 

In a massacre she later called "my operation", Tamimi brought a human bomb - a young Islamist zealot called Al-Masri with an explosives-filled guitar case on his back - from Ramallah to Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria, located at one of the city's busiest pedestrian crossings. 

She later recounted how she left him there after imparting instructions on how to proceed. She herself fled on foot to the Old City's Damascus Gate where she boarded a ride-share taxi van back to Ramallah and her night job as a TV newsreader. 

She heard the thunderous explosion from a safe distance. Initial news reports via the van's radio suggested the death toll was lower than she wanted: 

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.'  ...The driver was translating [from Hebrew to Arabic] for the passengers... 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], 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... [Source]

The toll kept rising and many dozens more were injured. The majority of the dead and maimed were, as Tamimi intended, Jewish children. 

By the time her ride reached Ramallah, it was clear she had produced the largest news story of that day. The key piece, the crowning achievement in her terms, was the murders of 14 "zionists". 

Malki, our teenage daughter, was in the center of town that afternoon with a friend, heading for a summer-camp counselors' meeting when they stopped on the way for lunch at a place they both loved. They were standing at the pizzeria's counter when Al-Masri entered the unguarded shop and walked up behind them. 

And then exploded.

We spent twelve nightmarish hours desperately searching for her. Eventually, with the help of a social worker, our two oldest sons located their sister's lifeless body in the small hours of the morning in a cold storage drawer at the Abu Kabir pathology center in Jaffa. Malki was the fifteenth victim. 

Of the many killed, two were American nationals: Malki, 15; and Judith Lillian Greenbaum (known to her family and friends as Shoshana), 31, a tourist and pregnant with her first child. A sixteenth victim, also a US citizen like Malki and Shoshana, remains unconscious in a Tel Aviv long-term care center today.

MEDIA CELEBRITY

Tamimi was born in 1980, the daughter of a career soldier in Jordan's military. She was raised and educated in Jordan and then, at 21 and a student at the Palestinian Arab Birzeit University near Ramallah, she became the first female admitted to the ranks of the Hamas terrorist forces. 

Once in, she was assigned to blow up a central Jerusalem supermarket with an exploding beer can. She failed and demanded a second mission. That's how some ten days later she spearheaded the Sbarro savagery that propelled her to fame. 

In 2001, and in the wake of the Sbarro devastation, Tamimi was arrested, tried and convicted by an Israeli military court on the basis of her full confession. A panel of three judges sentenced her in 2003 to sixteen terms of life imprisonment with an unusual recommendation that she never be released - no parole, no political deals, no swaps. 

No one paid attention and she was stunningly freed eight years later in October 2011 as part of an extortionate deal, ill-judged and catastrophic in our view, made by Israel with globally-outlawed terrorists of Hamas, the organization whom Tamimi was serving.

She was 31 when she walked out of her Israeli prison cell and returned triumphantly to Jordan and months of wide jubilation and public appearances. She was young enough to marry a few months later and to dramatically expand her career. 

THE HASHEMITE FACTOR

Early in 2012, from Jordan, she began presenting her own television program called "Breezes of the Free" (in Arabic “نسيم الأحرار”). The hour long celebration of terror and terrorists went to air weekly via the Hamas satellite network to a vast and ardent Arabic-speaking audience spread all over the world. 

Tamimi on the set of her TV show

Anyone aware of how tightly the King Abdullah governments ruling Jordan since 1999 manage the country's media will realize a show like Tamimi's could never happen unless that was what the king and his advisers wanted.

The context is important. Jordan is rated Not Free in Freedom in the World 2021, an annual study of worldwide political rights and civil liberties compiled by Freedom House. And the trend has grown stronger: a year earlier, Jordan was rated Partly Free as it was in 2019, 2018 and 2017. 

Plainly, Jordan is not one of those places where subversive voices can sneak under the regime's radar. If a message is getting transmitted, that reflects the Royal Hashemite Court's will.

THE FUGITIVE

In 2013, a year after Tamimi's horror show began going to air, the US filed terror charges against her in Washington. 

And promptly sealed them without any pubic announcement, keeping them absolutely secret. 

We learned off the record and long after the fact that this was supposed to allow high-level discussions to take place with Jordan about extraditing her into the hands of the FBI as required under the 1995 Jordan/US Extradition Treaty. Jordan had extradited fugitive Jordanians to the US multiple times since the treaty took effect. It similar and active treaties with numerous other states. 

But if indeed there were talks, they were unproductive. And on March 14, 2017, nearly four years after a federal judge had signed the charges, senior officials of the Department of Justice in Washington finally unsealed and publicized them [here]. 

Because of our involvement, the DOJ people did us the courtesy of an in-person briefing some hours ahead of the public announcement. Even so, we were unprepared for the distressing frustration that followed. 

The day those US federal charges were made public in 2017, the FBI added Tamimi to its Most Wanted Terrorists List. It's a small and exclusive list, currently made up of just 25 individuals, only two of them females. Some time later, the State Department's Rewards for Justice program posted a $5M reward for relevant information about Tamimi - whose home address and daily whereabouts were and are known to the media, the Jordanian authorities and the US government.

But just six days after the unsealing of the federal charges, Jordan's Court of Cassation, the kingdom's highest judicial body, ruled, as part of proceedings in which Tamimi was the centerpiece, that the 1995 treaty had a fatal flaw. Incredibly, they decided that in Tamimi's case, the US demand for extradition was unenforceable against Jordan. 

The details of the flaw are technical and irritating. It's beyond dispute that the Jordanian legislature could have easily fixed the problem then, and still can now. 

In a soft, almost inaudible voice, the US rejects the Jordanian position that the flaw and the invalidity let Jordan off the hook and leave Tamimi free to go about her life. The Jordan/US pact continues to be listed in Treaties in Force, an authoritative online State Department publication that underpins the American view. 

Throughout the five years since Jordan repudiated the treaty, no American official has addressed the matter publicly. Our repeated requests to a stream of US politicians and officials to tell the Jordanians publicly and out loud that harboring Tamimi disgraces them, fall on deaf ears. No such statement has been made by any of them. 

Instead, as Fox News reported during another of the many official visits by Abdullah to Washington, this one in July 2021, the State Department issues what can reasonably be called mantras. Vague assertions of fact blended with fond wishes and zero action. Fox showed this slide when it interviewed us live last summer:

In essence it's the same message the Trump administration issued. And it means as little today as it did then. 

For all practical purposes, the Sbarro victims have been swept under the carpet. 

OVER TO TURKEY

Now we jump to October 2021. 

In the intervening years, Tamimi has appeared multiple times on Aljazeera's multiple media, on BBC Arabic, on lesser known Arabic news channels, on Jordan's commercial RoyaTV channel and on numerous additional platforms where she has been interviewed, showcased and glorified as an icon. 

Her op-eds have appeared in the pages of multiple Arabic newspapers and news websites as well as on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and less-known Arabic-only social media sites. Arabic-language criticism of anything she has said, written or done is published nowhere.

Our occasional interactions with US government officials have been frustrating, sporadic, largely unproductive from our point of view and hard to arrange. Our experience with the US Embassy in Israel throughout the Trump years exemplifies the approach: as bereaved parents of a murdered US national expecting to be guided and assisted, we are mostly ignored. Not in a polite way and certainly not because we are rude. Persistent and raising an irksome issue, certainly. But never rude and not hostile.

By video, Tamimi speaks to the young Islamist

women in Istanbul - October 2021

Among the crumbs of information that we have gotten in these sometimes deplorable interactions is that the US government believes Jordan - because Jordan says so - has Tamimi under control. She's not inciting any more, we're assured. Her toxic influence has been neutralized. The problems are behind us.

From what we see, such claims are untrue.

In October 2021, Tamimi spoke in Arabic via video conference to an Islamist event in Istanbul, Turkey, held under the banner of الملتقى العلمي الدولي للشباب [“Gathering4youth”]. We spotted a video clip of the seminar that was uploaded to YouTube and promptly passed it along, with selected Arabic-to-English text translation, to senior US officials. If they are doing something with it, they're not telling us.

We asked a professional translator to review Tamimi's presentation. Here's the part we think captures the essence of her message:

...Allah let me have a membership in the ‘Izz ad-Deen al-Qassam battalions and [allowed me to] participate in two jihad operations that produced, by the Lord’s virtue, the deaths of fifteen zionists with 122 zionists wounded in two Jihad operations. We ask Allah to accept this. 

These two jihad operations are a crown on my head. By Allah’s virtue, I entered history by doing the finest of deeds, the finest operations, in the finest of ways, which are the ways of jihad. 

Praise Allah, He has prescribed me this fate. And when I met the "suicide bomber" [the Arabic expression translates literally into "the martyrdom-seeker"] ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri, this was not a matter of such ease to stand next to a bomber. There are many lessons I learned. Many lessons which ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri taught me without talking, [just by] being a road companion from Ramallah to Jerusalem, to the center of the [Jerusalem commercial] center where the Zionist entity is found, at the Jaffa and King George Avenue [corner]. This drive which lasted about an hour, from Ramallah to Jerusalem, or 90 minutes, [during] much of it I was learning from suicide bombers.

What does it mean to be a suicide bomber? It means that your spirit, your senses, your feelings, all of you, are pending against the Lord. Which is a difficult matter for us in this life to work out. But Hamas’s suicide bomber unit was able to spiritually train these suicide bombers.

What does it mean to sit for years [with] your sole mission to prepare your soul with effort, to train your soul? How do I become a spiritual character, how do I make my soul pending against Allah? And uproot all other attachments to this world. Only then shall I be worthy of the suicide bombers unit, and put my spirit forward in Allah’s path.

This is what ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri taught me.

However until now I have not reached even half a degree of the character of ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri and all suicide bombers who decided to put their souls forward in Allah’s path.”

It's hard to predict how much lethal damage is done when an eager and evidently impressionable audience of Islamist girls and young women, some of them about the age Tamimi was when she had her great moment at Sbarro, or younger, are exposed to a charismatic celebrity-jihad preacher with copious amounts of blood on her hands. 

The potential is horrific. Why has this not made headlines?  

ANTISEMITISM

From watching Ahlam Tamimi preach, we know political issues play almost no part in her messaging: no occupied territories, no green lines, no give-us-a-state. Theology seems to interest her more.

As she has said elsewhere, her brief and only conversation with ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri took place as they walked along central Jerusalem's Jaffa Road on their way to the Sbarro corner. She says he asked her a question:

Are there religious Jews in the place where we are going to conduct the attack?

Tamimi: 

That was his question and I said yes. There are religious Jews there and also other people. I had been to the area before. I knew there was a Jewish religious school near there. He asked how many religious Jews would be there. 

Interviewer:

Why did he ask about religious Jews?

Tamimi:

Because the base of the conflict between the Israelis [she does not use the Arabic word for Jews] and the Palestinians is a religious struggle. When we came to the place, he looked at my eyes and I told him: There is no god other than the mighty Allah. He went on his way and I went on my way... My emotions and thoughts focused only on [Al-Masri]  and his strong personality and his vision and his action. I could only think about him and about his great personality and I didn't think about anything else.

Interviewer: 

Do you feel sorry?

Tamimi:

No, absolutely not. Why? For what?

In fighting for justice, there has been no alternative for us but to watch the cold barbarism of our gentle daughter's hard-faced murderer. As difficult as this is, we do it so we can urge decision-makers to understand that what chills people like us actually inspires and incites people in that other world across the river. 

[For some additional context about Tamimi's views on the Jews, see "08-Oct-17: Why kill religious Jewish children? Because, says Hamas celebrity-jihadist, this is a religious struggle" on our blog.]

AND JUSTICE?

No one in power says it but the American prosecution of Tamimi is stuck. The party doing the obstructing is a needy and highly dependent ally of the United States. It's the world's second-largest recipient of annual US foreign aid amounting to billions of US taxpayer dollars each year. 

Jordan is also bound by treaty to hand fugitives over to the FBI on request. It has in fact done that repeatedly in the other fugitive Jordanian cases that came before Tamimi. 

The US is bizarrely quiet about Jordan's egregious breach of the solemn 27 year-old legal obligation. This plays into the hands of dark forces in Jordan and elsewhere in the Arab world. They propagate the offensive notion that when done in the name of Palestinian Arab "resistance", terrorism isn't terror at all. It's bravery, heroism, religious devotion and a reflection, as Tamimi puts it, of a great personality.

Let's also factor in the reality that Jordan, as documented by the Anti Defamation League, has sky-high levels of antisemitism. We have argued ["27-Aug-21: Peace, terror and Jordan's under-reported attachment to anti-Jewish bigotry"] that the kingdom's comprehensive failure to address this has consequences. Either Jordan wants peace and understands that this comes with a significant commitment to change. Or it wants to allow hatred and violent extremism to go on. Via its rhetoric, its actions and its inaction, and especially by harboring the monster who bombed Sbarro and allowing the unconscionable benefits she has gained from Jordan' tolerance of her lethal bigotry, Jordan signals that it wants both. 

And that cannot be.

Malki HY"D

We don't understand the US lawmakers, diplomats and officials who sweep justice in the Tamimi case under the rug. 

We don't understand the State Department with its self-incriminating mantras about how they're trying so hard for years to get her out of the clutches of the Jordanian juggernaut. 

We don't understand Congressional lawmakers on both sides of the divide. We don't know how, given their stated principles, they can fail to demand that this Jordanian woman be immediately brought to justice in Washington.

We don't understand America's organized Jewish leadership. Their failure, an especially painful one, to stand with us on an issue that ought to be a priority, an opportunity to speak truth to power (and let's be clear that the power in this challenge is not Jordan), raises concerns they ignore.

We're ready to explain this to them. But not here.