28-Apr-17: Calling the Jordanians to account for the cold-blooded murder of three Green Berets

Jim Moriarty salutes his murdered son's coffin [Image Source]

[Please see the important update at the end of this post.]

It's now clear we are not alone in struggling to achieve justice over the objections, double-talk and calculated indifference of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Regular readers of our blog know that we have embarked on a battle to get Jordan to comply with its obligations under the 1995 Extradition Treaty it signed with the Clinton administration.

Within that framework, we - and the FBI and the Department of Justice - want to see them hand over our daughter's murderer, a Jordanian woman of 37 called Ahlam Tamimi, so that she can be put on trial in the United States for the most serious of offences. An article that appeared recently in the New York Jewish Week provides the background: "30-Mar-17: Years of pursuing a child's killer: Setbacks, challenges and a roller-coaster ride"

Tamimi was charged under US Federal law in July 2013 with a series of felonies arising from her masterminding the 2001 massacre-by-human-bomb at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. Our daughter Malki, 15, was killed in that grotesque act of savagery. Dozens more were killed or maimed. Those charges against Tamimi were in a sealed criminal complaint that remained secret until unsealed nearly four years later, on March 14, 2017. (Tamimi had been charged with multiple counts of murder under Israeli law a decade earlier and had pleaded guilty to all charges. She was sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment which came to an abrupt and premature end in the catastrophic Shalit Deal of 2011.)

We presume the US Department of Justice was attempting to negotiate with the Jordanians during those four years up until last month. The Jordanians eventually refused and have come up with several reasons.

Jordan's brazen approach to the US demand includes claiming 22 years after it was signed that the extradition agreement is unconstitutional. Or that it was never ratified (does anyone actually know who has to ratify it? And why can they not ratify it today?). Or that it is somehow not applicable to Jordanians. Whatever, since Jordan is owned and operated by a family whose origins are Saudi Arabian and who dominate a society whose population overwhelmingly identify as Palestinian Arabs, no one expects a serious response. What's significant is simply that Jordan is saying "no"... and that Tamimi is regarded as a national hero in Jordan because - and not despite the fact that - she committed those 2001 murders.

There's no doubt the extradition treaty was regarded as binding at an earlier stage (and still is by the Americans). Under King Hussein, who is no longer alive, Jordan handed over to the US one of the plotters of the first World Trade Center terror attack from 1993 for extradition and eventual imprisonment inside America's justice system.

Here's how that extradition from Jordan was reported:

Bomb Suspect Extradited to the U.S. From Jordan | August 03, 1995 | Los Angeles Times | Robin Wright and Ronald J. Ostrow
WASHINGTON — In a closely held operation, the FBI on Wednesday brought back from Jordan a heretofore unknown suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, government sources disclosed. Eyad Ismail Najim, a Jordanian national, allegedly rode with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef in the bomb-packed van when it was driven into the underground parking lot of the trade center in New York City... Like Yousef, he left the United States shortly after the bomb went off on Feb. 26, 1993. The explosion killed six, injured more than 1,000 and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. Yousef was brought back to the United States from Pakistan in another FBI covert operation last February. The two seizures of prominent suspects in the worst international terrorist attack ever to take place inside the United States rank among the biggest counter-terrorism successes ever achieved by U.S. law enforcement agencies. President Clinton is expected to issue a statement today heralding the U.S. victories against international terrorism, White House sources said.
Najim has been under sealed indictment since shortly after the other suspects were arrested and indicted, according to government sources. U.S. intelligence has long known where to find Najim but the FBI was unable to request extradition until a treaty was worked out with Jordan in March, the sources said. The final instruments of extradition were completed and exchanged last Saturday, allowing the FBI to proceed. The indictment had been sealed to ensure that Najim would not learn that he had been identified and try to flee again. While in Jordan, he was enrolled in school. Like many of the other trade center defendants, Najim is described as fairly young. "He thought he got away with it," one law enforcement official said. Najim was flown from Amman, the Jordanian capital, aboard a U.S. government plane and was expected to arrive at Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, N.Y., a former Air Force base, and then be taken to the FBI's New York office for processing.

Ismoil is imprisoned today at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum (ADMAX) Facility in Florence, Colorado. He is due to be released on August 30, 2204 (not a typing error).

King Hussein's son, Abdullah II, has the powers of an absolute monarch. He could choose to see to it that his country complies with the extradition treaty. No constitution or law or customary practice would get in the way. So far, at least, he chooses to do nothing.

At the same time, he engages in self-congratulatory Tweets honoring his contribution to the fight against terrorists - like this:

Twitter source (April 5, 2017)

We were struck by the hubris, and asked him:

Twitter source (April 27, 2017)

No response of course. Nor did his foreign minister trouble himself to react to this:

Twitter source (April 28, 2017)

Recently we have had the honor of coming to know the father of one of three US Special Forces servicemen whose deaths while serving the United States on the territory of one its supposed allies in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan during November 2016 has barely been reported. We wrote about it at the time, and it turns out our predictions were not far from the mark: "18-Nov-16: American service personnel killings in the Mid East get scant reporting and even less comprehension".

The Hashemite royal couple visiting the Trump
White House, April 5, 2017 [Image Source] 

Jordan is holding the shooter and will not extradite him to the United States either.

Here is a first-person account, reproduced in full, written by Jim Moriarty, a man who served his country via three tours of duty as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam, and is today a Houston attorney and a bereaved and angry father. Mr Moriarty's son was one of the three murdered in Jordan.

Jordan must stand to account for deaths of U.S. soldiers | James R. Moriarty | Houston Chronicle (Associated Press) | March 30, 2017 

A Jordanian soldier killed my son Army Staff Sgt. James F. Moriarty and two of his Green Beret brothers as they returned at midday to King Faisal air base in Jordan on Nov. 4, 2016. Since then, the government of Jordan has repeatedly misled the world about the incident, which I believe was nothing less than murder. 

Jordan quickly blamed my son and his fallen brothers, Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Lewellen and Staff Sgt. Kevin McEnroe, for failing to properly stop at a guard gate as they returned to the base where they lived and worked. International news reports soon included the false Jordanian explanation. Then the Jordanian story changed. An "accidental" weapon discharge provoked the guard to open fire, officials said. An FBI investigation later showed that excuse to be false, too. 

Then three weeks ago, just hours before the Lewellen and McEnroe families and I went public in Washington with findings from our ongoing search for justice, Jordan's ambassador to the U.S. released a new statement. The ambassador for King Abdullah II - whose country receives more than $100 million per month in U.S. foreign aid - called the killings "tragic and very unfortunate" and "deplorable," but still claimed that "rules of engagement" were followed.

The letter infuriated our families. It also further united us. We reside in different geographical and political places, but our three families agree that honoring our sons' service and sacrifices must include finding the truth about what happened to them in Jordan and why. 

Because of the work of the U.S. Army and the FBI, we now know what happened to our sons. What we do not know is why it happened or when Jordan will be held accountable. On Feb. 28, the FBI showed us the haunting surveillance video of our sons' killings.

The video shows the truck driven by McEnroe slowly pulled up to the gate - just like any other day. The Jordanian soldier, wearing body armor and hidden in a concrete guardhouse behind camouflaged netting, opened fire without warning with an M-16 assault rifle. He was no more than 5 feet away. Bullet holes appeared in the view of the camera. Shattered glass flew.

The video also shows the chances of survival for McEnroe and Lewellen were almost zero. Caught completely by surprise attack, they died quickly in a hail of gunfire. My son Jimmy met a different fate. The Jordanian killer stalked him for minutes.

My son and another Green Beret, who would survive the attack, exited their trucks just in time to avoid being killed in the first bursts of gunfire. Armed only with pistols, they then spent the remaining six-and-a-half minutes of my son's life communicating with the soldier and other Jordanian soldiers in English and in Arabic. They soon realized they were in a fight to the death. The video shows Jimmy desperately waving and motioning to the five nearby Jordanian soldiers with whom they had worked that morning. Six other Jordanian gate guards did nothing to stop the assault.

The Jordanian soldier finally cornered the Green Beret survivor and my son. As the shooter came around a nearby truck, he caught the survivor by surprise. My son can be seen standing up in full view of the shooter and engaging him with his pistol. This move allowed the Green Beret to get to the Jordanian soldier's blind side and empty his pistol into gaps in his body armor, wounding him. My son took the bullets intended for the survivor and died moments later. The shooter, who was taken into custody by the Jordanian government, then was put into a medically induced coma. FBI investigators later conducted hours of questioning and the shooter gave yet another false explanation for the deaths: He heard "a loud noise" that he took for gunfire.

Americans are told that Jordan is our "ally." This incident raises troubling questions about that relationship - especially as Jordan refuses to accept responsibility for these deaths of U.S. troops or confirm what truly happened. Were I to speak directly with King Abdullah, I would remind him that my son called out in Arabic to his killer and other Jordanian soldiers, "We are Americans. We are friends." 

The time has come for the Jordanian government to finally account for these killings or risk its $1.6 billion foreign aid package. We want the killer of our sons prosecuted. We want the Jordanian government to apologize and publicly clear the names of our sons - and do everything possible to prevent such killings in the future. No more U.S. service members need to die at the hands of so-called American allies. 

King Abdullah II confers with the Chief Terror Officer of Hamas, Khaled
Meshaal, in Jordan [Image Source]

After a long period of asserting that the murderous attack by one of its soldiers was due to error by the Americans or, in a later variation, by the Jordanian, Jordan's version of events has just been re-adjusted once again:

After months of publicly defending the actions of a Jordanian guard who opened fire on a U.S. military convoy of Army Special Forces soldiers, killing three, Jordanian government officials have admitted that the shooter did not follow the military’s protocol and will face prosecution. Dana Daoud, a Jordanian Embassy spokeswoman, told The Washington Post that M’aarek Abu Tayeh — a member of the Jordanian king’s elite Hashemite force — will be “tried in a military court,” but she declined to comment on the nature of the charges against him or when a trial might occur... ["Jordan says guard who killed three U.S. soldiers did not follow rules of engagement", Washington Post, April 13, 2017]

Not much more needs to be said about Jordanian notions of justice that is not already obvious from previous encounters. 

We're thinking in particular about the shabby matter of Ahmed Daqamseh, a Jordanian armed guard who shot to death in cold blood seven Israeli schoolgirls. He was released prematurely last month to a well-publicized Jordanian celebrity's welcome: "12-Mar-17: What a Jordanian hero and his admirers tell us about the likelihood of peace".

To end, a handful of other recent posts of ours concerning the Jordanians, their idea of justice and their refusal to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, the happy, proud and celebrated killer of our daughter:

• 05-Apr-17: Abdullah in the White House today: Questions need to be asked
• 01-Apr-17: Ahlam Tamimi, Most Wanted Terrorist - now in Arabic
• 30-Mar-17: Years of pursuing a child's killer: Setbacks, challenges and a roller-coaster ride
• 28-Mar-17: Terror, justice and the Hashemite king of Jordan
• 23-Mar-17: Looking for justice in Jordan, Jerusalem and Washington
• 21-Mar-17: Tamimi extradition: When it's claimed that something is illegal in Jordan...
• 20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over
• 19-Mar-17: A thought about Jordan and its treaty obligations
• 15-Mar-17: Sbarro and justice
• 14-Mar-17: Will Jordan's lust for dead Jewish children cause problems with the US?

UPDATE July 29, 2017: We have just posted an update ["28-Jul-17: In Jordan, a choice among honor and pride and those lying security cameras"] that looks at the outcome of a Jordanian criminal trial and its aftermath. There are two statements in it worth highlighting:

1. All the factual claims by the Jordanians now turn out to be nonsense; and
2. There's a lot to be learned about having a neighbour like Jordan. And about how truth is perceived when the issue is really about honor - Jordanian honor.

The whole sorry affair has gotten far less media attention and political analysis than it deserves. Perhaps now that the gunman is behind Jordanian bars, that will change. But our own experience with Jordanian frankness and respect for law, morality and strategic alliances suggests don't hold your breath.

28-Mar-17: Terror, justice and the Hashemite king of Jordan

King Abdullah II of Jordan hosts Hamas arch-terrorist Khaled Mashaal
on the Islamist thug's first official visit to Amman, January 2012 [Image Source]

Jordan's refusal to comply with its treaty obligations to the United States and to hand over our daughter's murderer for extradition is getting a remarkably easy ride in the major media.

To make sense of that, a person would have to understand that Jordan and its king are widely treated in the West as moderate, reasonable and aligned with American interests. The US State Department (see "14-Mar-17: Will Jordan's lust for dead Jewish children cause problems with the US?") routinely describes the Hashemite Kingdom in its annual country-by-country survey on terror in glowing terms. The June 2015 report called it "a key ally and a model partner in combating terrorism".

That was never a view with which we agree and it's even less so now in the wake of the scheming the Jordanians have done in the past five years to avoid bringing a mass murderer of Israelis, and particularly of Jewish children, to justice. We're speaking of the self-confessed murdering jihadist, Ahlam Tamimi, Hamas' first-ever female terror agent and a Jordanian from birth. Jordan is where she was sent by Israel when her freedom from imprisonment was extorted in the 2011 Shalit Deal. She has led an exceptionally comfortable life there as a Jordanian - and pan-Arab - celebrity since her return from Israel.

We think Jordan's view of what terror is must be based on a definition totally alien to the one we and the countries of the West recognize.

Caroline Glick, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and travels several times a year to Washington where she routinely briefs senior administration officials and members of Congress on issues of joint Israeli-American concern. Her columns appear regularly in the Jerusalem Post (where the one below appeared yesterday) and in the Hebrew-language Makor Rishon.

A Test for King Abdullah
Caroline B. Glick | Jerusalem Post | March 27, 2017 at 21:20

Ahlam Tamimi is a mass murdering monster. And today she is living the good life, as a “journalist,” inciting jihad in Jordan under the protection of the King Abdullah.

On August 9, 2001, in the service of Hamas, Tamimi led a suicide bomber to the Sbarro Pizzeria in central Jerusalem. It was summer vacation. The streets were filled with children and parents.

Sbarro was filled with children and their parents.

Tamimi had scouted out the location of the bombing ahead of time. She chose Sbarro because it was a popular destination for families with young kids.

Tamimi brought the bomber to the restaurant. His bomb, hidden in a guitar case, weighed 5-10 kilos. It was surrounded by nails to puncture the flesh and internal organs of the victims, maximizing their pain and bodily damage.

Fifteen people, including seven young children and a pregnant woman were killed in the blast.

Another 130 were wounded. Chana Nachenberg, today 47, was 31 at the time. She was torn apart by the blast, only to survive, hospitalized in a vegetative state ever since.

Tamimi was sentenced to 16 consecutive life sentences and 15 more years in prison for her crime.

She was released in 2011 as part of the ransom deal Hamas coerced the government to accept to secure the freedom of IDF Sgt. Gilad Schalit. Schalit had been held hostage and incommunicado by Hamas in Gaza since he was abducted from Israel in 2006.

Tamimi, like the other thousand terrorists she was freed with, was not pardoned. Israel’s release was a conditional commutation. The terrorists were freed on condition that they did not engage in either terrorism or incitement of terrorism subsequent to their release.

Dozens of terrorists released under the Schalit ransom deal have been returned to prison to serve out the remainders of the terms over the past five years due to their violation of those conditions.

Immediately upon her release, Tamimi began violating the terms of her commutation by inciting terrorism.

She has been able to avoid returning to jail to serve out the remainder of her sentence because she decamped to Jordan.

From the safety of King Abdullah’s capital city Amman, Tamimi has worked as host of a television program on Hamas’s television station. Hamas television, which exists for the explicit purpose of inciting terrorism and indoctrinating viewers to become jihadists, operates openly in Jordan, as does Hamas.

Indeed, in 2011 King Abdullah decided to embrace the jihadist terrorist group that controls Gaza and is allied with Islamic State and Iran. Hamas leaders have frequently visited Jordan in recent years and the terrorist group is able to openly operate in the kingdom.

Since her release, Tamimi has given countless interviews and as traveled through much of the Arab world, celebrating her act of mass murder. She has said repeatedly that she would commit her children’s massacre again if she could.

Three of Tamimi’s victims were American citizens.

Malki Roth was 15 when she was killed. Shoshana Yehudit (Judy) Greenbaum was 31 and five months pregnant. Nachenberg is also a US citizen.

Earlier this month, the US Department of Justice unsealed a 2013 indictment of Tamimi regarding her role in the murder of US citizens. The Justice Department officially requested that the government of Jordan extradite Tamimi to the US to face trial.

The US signed an extradition treaty with Jordan in 1995. But, as Malki Roth’s father Arnold Roth wrote last week in a blog post regarding the extradition request, since 1997, Jordan has claimed that the agreement was not ratified by the Jordanian parliament.

Based on this claim, two courts in Jordan, including the supreme court of appeals, rejected the US extradition request claiming that it would be unconstitutional to respect it.

Roth scoffed at the argument, noting that in Jordan, the notion of constitutionality is entirely arbitrary.

In his words, “In a monarchy where the king changes prime ministers and governments more often than some presidents change their suits, there’s an inherent problem with paying so much respectful attention to a constitution. Jordanian law, and what is legal and illegal depends on one individual. If [King Abdullah] wanted to extradite her [Tamimi], she would be in the US today.”

And this brings us to Abdullah, and what he wants.

Last week, this column discussed the hero’s welcome that Ahmad Dagamseh received when he returned home from prison. Dagamseh, a former Jordanian soldier, was released this month from Jordanian prison after serving a 20-year term for murdering seven Israeli schoolgirls at the so-called Island of Peace in the Jordan Valley in 1997.

After the column was published, Mudar Zahran, a Palestinian Jordanian ex-patriot and regime opponent who serves as the secretary general of the Jordanian Opposition Coalition wrote to me to highlight the fact that Dagamseh’s release was widely and exuberantly covered by media organs controlled by King Abdullah.

Zahran wrote that an official envoy of Jordan’s Interior Ministry Ghaleb Zohbi greeted Dagamseh at the prison upon his release and that Dagamseh was driven from jail to his village in a Mercedes flanked by a convoy of police cruisers.

Zahran added that the standard practice is for released prisoners to be taken home in a police wagon.

In a subsequent email exchange, Zahran set out his case for replacing the Hashemite minority regime with a Palestinian majority regime.

Zahran argued that the number of refugees in Jordan has been purposely inflated, and that the massive Palestinian majority in the population has not been significantly degraded by the refugee flows from Iraq and Syria over the past decade and a half.

According to his data, which he contends is supported by US embassy in Amman cables published by Wikileaks, there are 6.1 million Palestinians in Jordan. The kingdom is host to 750,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

Zahran accused King Abdullah of deliberately fanning the flames of antisemitism and anti-Americanism among the Jordanian public in order to make himself appear indispensable to Israel and the West.

Dagamseh’s celebrated release, like the regime’s protection of Tamimi and its willingness to permit her to continue to incite jihad against Israel from Amman are examples of this practice.

Abdullah’s notion, Zahran argues, persuasively, is that by giving a microphone to jihadists, Abdullah convinces Israel and the US that they cannot afford to allow anything to happen to him or to his minority regime.

So convinced, Israel and the US say nothing as Abdullah stacks his parliament with Muslim Brotherhood members. They voice no objection as Abdullah empowers Hamas, gives safe haven to terrorist murderers of Israelis and Americans, and rejects extradition requests on fictional constitutional grounds that he himself concocted.

Zahran, who seeks to replace the Hashemites with a Palestinian majority regime, which would allow Jordan to serve as the national home of the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, argues that Jordan is a state run by the military and intelligence services, which themselves are controlled by the US military’s Central Command.

In his words, Jordanian forces cannot “relocate an armored vehicle” without first getting “permission from US Central Command.”

Zahran’s vision of a post-Hashemite Jordan is interesting. He envisions the US continuing to have overall control of Jordan’s security forces. The new regime would liberalize the economy and stop jihadist incitement while actually targeting jihadists rather than coddling them.

The regime for which he advocates would be dominated by the long-discriminated-against Palestinian majority. It would work with Israel to solve its conflict with the Palestinians. Zahran’s Jordan would restore Jordanian citizenship to the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria and give them voting rights in Jordan.

It is hard to know whether Zahran’s vision of Jordan is a viable one. Certainly it sounds a lot better than what we experience with Abdullah. And it deserves serious consideration.

By the same token, it is time for the US and Israel to test Abdullah, the moderate man we cannot do without.

The first test should be an ultimatum. Abdullah should be told that he must either extradite Tamimi to the US for trial or send her back to Israel to serve the remainder of her sentence. If he refuses, then either Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or US President Donald Trump, or both, should meet publicly with Zahran to discuss his vision for the future of Jordan.

---
A version of this article also appeared on the FrontPageMag website today.

14-Mar-17: Will Jordan's lust for dead Jewish children cause problems with the US?

The original caption reads: "His Majesty King Abdullah presents the Hashemite

flag to the Jordan Armed Forces-Arab Army during a ceremony

in Amman on Tuesday (Photo courtesy of Royal Court)" [Image Source]

This being a blog about terrorism and those who do it, we tend to write often about despicable people.

We profiled an especially vile killer of seven Jewish girls on a 1997 school-trip in yesterday's post ["12-Mar-17: What a Jordanian hero and his admirers tell us about the likelihood of peace"]. He's not smart, he's certainly not brave, he was said by his family to have been insane at the time he did the sickening things that got him sent to prison in 1997. And he has never ever uttered a syllable that suggests he did wrong and regrets it.

Quite the opposite: as soon as he was set free on Sunday and "driven home in a convoy of dozens of cars whose drivers were honking their horns, a video shared on social media showed" [source], Ahmad Musa Mustafa Daqamseh launched into a series of public statements via the media most of which has gone unreported in the more civilized parts of the world. (Almost all the reports are in Arabic.)

For instance, Daqamseh declared (according to Aljazeera - here's MEMRI's transcript and video) that we Israelis are “human waste” that must be eradicated. That the rest of the world vomited us up and now we need to be eliminated "by fire or by burial". And that if that's not done by the hands of the cheering crowds standing around him as he said this, then "the task will fall on the future generations to do.”

Now put yourself into the shoes of a Jordanian leader. Perhaps a Member of Parliament. Or a prominent journalist. What would you want people to know about where you stand on the matters addressed by the newly-freed thug? How embarrassed would you be that so many of your citizens are openly rejoicing at the man's release and at the crimes he committed?

Wonder no more:

• "The Jordan Times on Monday contacted several Jordanian opinion leaders who declined comment for various reasons such as the controversial nature of the debate and to avoid escalation of disputes." [Jordan Times, March 13, 2017; the paper is owned by the Jordan Press Foundation which - says Wikipedia - has been majority government-owned since its inception in 1976]
• Parliamentarian "Mohammad Riyati (Aqaba) wrote on his Facebook page that he visited Daqamseh to congratulate him on his freedom after serving the 20-year prison sentence, describing him as a “Muslim and Arab nations’ icon”"
• The same politician is quoted saying he will "propose a memorandum to the Lower House to deduct JD100 from the 130 deputies’ salaries to be given to Daqamseh and his family".
• Ahlam Tamimi, the woman who lives free as a bird in Jordan despite being the mastermind of our daughter Malki's murder, - evidently saw in Daqamseh's sickening words a kindred homicidal spirit. In an Arabic tweet yesterday, she said his hateful and disgusting words (she didn't call them that) highlight the failure of Jordan's prison system. We can only hope, as we wrote yesterday, that she soon gets to experience from the inside how successful or not the Jordanian penal system actually is. 
• The head of a Jordan student rights group called Thabahtouna convincingly asserted that Jordanians "did not care much about the details of the act but instead that they considered it as a response to prolonged Israeli aggression against Palestinians and Arabs in general". They're OK with it, is what the leader, Fakher Daas who tweets here, is basically saying. He also says Jordanian festivities "celebrating Daqamseh’s release contained a message condemning the peace agreement with Israel" and that Israeli plans "to normalize relations with Arabs" had failed. He's fine with that too, of course.
• "MP Khalil Attiya lauded the release of Ahmed Daqamseh from prison, calling for his protection." [Via MEMRI]
• Another Jordanian parliamentarian, Dima Tahboub: "This is a Jordanian day of celebration. We are very happy at (Daqamseh's) release, which is overdue. Even in prison, we considered him to be free, because no one can arrest someone like the soldier Daqamseh. Today, his freedom is complete. He was free in prison, and now he is free outside. We congratulate the Jordanian people, the Daqamseh family, and ourselves. We congratulate the people who continue to uphold the principles for which Daqamseh was imprisoned."  [Via MEMRI]
• Jordanian parliamentarian Saleh Al-Armouti: "Daqamseh's release has undoubtedly warmed the hearts of us Jordanians."  [Via MEMRI]

What must it be like to live in a country with leaders of that calibre? With such widespread popular support of your neighbours' children? [Click here for our previous posts tagged with "Jordan".]

So how is it that Jordan keeps being lauded in the State Department's annual survey of terrorism? State's June 2015 "Country Reports on Terrorism" annual survey says of the Hashemite Kingdom:

Jordan remained a key ally and a model partner in combating terrorism and extremist ideology... Jordan demonstrated regional leadership in the fight against ISIL... and participated fully on the diplomatic, political, financial, and military fronts... Jordanian prisons have a religiously based de-radicalization program that seeks to re-engage violent extremist inmates into the non-violent mainstream of their faith.

Jordan legislated its first anti-terrorism law in 2006, a year after a series of terrorist bomb blasts at three Amman hotels that killed dozens of people.

Under the new law, penalties for terrorist acts range from 10 years in prison to the death penalty, and the definition of terrorism has been expanded to include any act meant to create sedition, harm property or jeopardise international relations, or to use the Internet or media outlets to promote "terrorist" thinking. [Aljazeera, April 25, 2014]

That law has since undergone changes (summarized in this April 2014 AFP syndicated report). But what the State Department report fails to mention is how Jordan has carefully defined terror over the years so that acts of violence directed at Israelis are specifically, by definition, never to be considered terror. For instance:

Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism of 1999 (Ratified 28 Aug. 2003): "Jordan does not consider national armed struggle and fighting foreign occupation in the exercise of people’s right to self-determination as terrorist acts under art. 2(1)(b)" [Source]

Jordan's creativity with the definition of terror is not new and hardly a secret, but largely ignored. So too the wildly popular support that terror when directed at Israelis enjoys among Jordanians. 

The quiet celebrity lifestyle enjoyed by Ahlam Tamimi, who delivered the bomb to the Sbarro pizzeria in August 2001, can be happening only because the kingdom and its leaders are fine with that.

From within Jordan's borders and regularly venturing beyond them, Tamimi speaks widely and often as an honored guest. 

She speaks at its universities, professional guilds, law courts and other venues; records her television program "Naseem Al Ahrar" (translation: “Breezes of the Free”) week after week. Or rather she did until about November 2016 - and then she seems to have stopped appearing though the program continues. The show has been beamed out to the Arabic-speaking world since 2012 giving its presenter the status of a genuine pan-Arab celebrity. 

Tamimi has boasted repeatedly of her central role in the Sbarro pizzeria massacre. She has zero remorse. The Jordanians seem to love her for it.

Should the US government be fine with that too?

12-Mar-17: What a Jordanian hero and his admirers tell us about the likelihood of peace

On March 18, 2014, clan members of the convicted murderer shouted and
waved shoes outside Jordan's parliament demanding Daqamseh's release
[Image Source]

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan this morning released from prison a man called Ahmed Mousa Daqamseh.

Not such a well-known name in Western countries, he's something of a folk hero among the Palestinian Arabs who constitute the clear majority of Jordan's population.

This is because he recently won the Arab Idol television competition and his songs are heard everywhere.

No, we're not being serious. He doesn't write songs. He doesn't perform on TV. His fame comes from the fact that he developed a wildly-successful best-selling app for the Android smart-phone platform.

No, no, that's not true either. We don't actually think the high school dropout has any facility with technology after years behind bars. No, he's famous - truly - because he plays center-half in one of Europe's most-high profile soccer teams and is one of the team's stars.

No, not that either.

The real truth is Ahmed Daqamseh is a celebrity among Palestinian Arabs because on March 13, 1997 while serving in Jordan's military as a 29-year-old lowly corporal and posted to a site known to Israelis as Naharayim - meaning two rivers since it's the point of confluence of the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers (the Jordanians call it Baqura), and for reasons described here, as the Island of Peace (a Hollywood film publicist must have been involved in coming up with that wildly improbable name), he cold-bloodedly opened fire on a group of visiting Israelis.

The Israelis, all brawny men with long years of fighting experience behind them, were heavily armed and chanting slogans impugning the honor of the Jordanian kingdom.

No, sorry again. We're making that up.

The people on whom he opened fire were schoolgirls - all of them eighth-graders. They had come that morning from the southern Israeli city of Beit Shemesh's AMIT Fuerst School. They were bused to the Island of Peace for a school field trip, and not a single one of them was armed. Not even with girl-sized machine-guns. Not even with petite hand-grenades.

Here are the names and ages of those whom he shot to death:

Sivan Fathi, 13; Karen Cohen, 14; Ya'ala Me'iri, 13; Shiri Badayev, 14; Natalie Alkalai, 13; Adi Malka, 13; Nirit Cohen, 13. All but little Sivan were from Beit Shemesh itself. She was from Tzelafon.  

Six other children were injured. Their lives are remembered by a beautiful memorial at the site of the shooting called, in heart-breaking fashion, the Hill of the Picked Flowers.

Daqamseh told the Jordanian court, a military tribunal of five army judges that tried him on criminal charges, that he had no option but to use his gun, a high-powered, US-made M16 automatic rifle, and fire at the enemy agents because

he was insulted and angered that the girls were whistling and clapping while he was praying [Wikipedia]

He would probably have killed even more children but for the fact that the rifle he grabbed from another soldier jammed. Despite the large scale of the tragic outcome, he was not sentenced to be executed - as the Jordanians have shown they have no problem doing - but instead was ordered to serve a long period of imprisonment.

Cover of Yediot Aharonot, the day after the Naharayim
massacre, March 1997 [Image Source]. The headline
reads "The murder of the girls"

A March 15, 1997 account in the Washington Post paints a pathetic picture:

A high school dropout from the village of Ibdir, the gunman was drafted 12 years ago, his family said. He had two sons and a daughter but no history of violence and was not affiliated with any political group, family members said. "We're shocked by his action," Mousa Daqamseh said as tears flowed down his cheeks. "My boy was unstable," Daqamseh's mother added. "He had a psychological problem and used to have anxieties."
She refused to give other details except to say: "He used to sit alone and stare in the open and think. He used to get angry sometimes, but cool down after a long walk." ["Israeli girls buried as thousands mourn", Washington Post, March 15, 1997]

Another report at the time called him suicidal:

A Jordanian soldier accused of gunning down seven Israeli schoolgirls in March has a personality disorder and tried to commit suicide in 1989, a psychiatrist testified yesterday. Dr. Nabil Hmoud, a Jordanian army major, told a military hearing that Cpl. Ahmed Daqamseh, 26, is mentally sound but suffers from a personality disorder that may lead him to harm himself or others. He did not say what the personality disorder was... [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 17 June 1997]

Whether sane or feigning mental illness, Daqamseh never expressed a shred of remorse for the massacre or the lives he stole. Interviewed by the Jordanian weekly a-Shahed in 2004, he said

"If I could return to that moment, I would behave exactly the same way. Every day that passes, I grow stronger in the belief that what I did was my duty." [Jerusalem Post, March 12, 2017]

That murderous determination somehow did not make it into the news media at the time:

Fellow soldiers and a woman who claimed to be his mother said the gunman has mental problems. There was no other immediate explanation for his actions. [Reuters, March 14, 1997]

Dignitaries calling on the bereaved families in the immediate aftermath
of the killings [Image Source]

And as we noted, today (Sunday) he walked free at about 1:00 o'clock in the morning [source].

How is he being received?

• From a syndicated Agence France-Press report ["Jordan minister dubs Israel girls’ killer ‘hero’", AFP, February 14, 2011]: Jordan’s justice minister on Monday described a Jordanian soldier serving a life sentence for killing seven Israeli schoolgirls in 1997 as a “hero,” drawing an expression of “revulsion” from Israel. “I support the demonstrators’ demand to free Ahmad Dakamseh. He’s a hero. He does not deserve prison,” Hussein Mujalli, who was named minister last week, told AFP after taking part in the sit-in held by trade unions. “If a Jewish person killed Arabs, his country would have built a statue for him instead of imprisonment.” Mujalli, a former president of the Jordan Bar Association, was Dakamseh’s lawyer. “It is still my case and I will still defend him. It is a top priority for me,” he said... The minister’s comments drew a furious response from Israel... “Israel is shocked and recoils from these comments in revulsion,” a foreign ministry statement said... Maisara Malas, who heads a trade unions’ committee to support and defend the soldier, told AFP he handed a letter to Mujalli, demanding Dakamseh’s release. “We cannot imagine that a great fighter like Dakamseh is in jail instead of reaping the rewards of his achievement,” the letter said. Jordan’s powerful Islamist movement and the country’s 14 trade unions, which have more than 200,000 members, have repeatedly called for Dakamseh’s release.
• In April 2013, 110 of the Jordanian parliament's 120 members signed a petition demanding a pardon for Daqamseh ["
• Sweeping Majority of Jordan MPs Sign Petition Calling for Release of Man Who Killed 7 Israeli Girls",
Haaretz, April 12, 2013]
• On February 25, 2014, during a debate on the same request in the Jordanian Parliament's House of Representatives, a group of MPs headed by Ali Al-Sanid again called for the government to release Daqamseh. Here's part of their manifesto as translated by MEMRI [source] which speaks of the pathetic shooter with alleged mental problems as "...a rare man, peerless among men, a knight who, mounted on glory, acted marvelously for his national cause; of a prisoner who was a source of concern for his jailors and whose name is linked to the suffering of his nation. This man swore by Allah – and, later, by blood and by bullets of lead, like the martyrs – that Palestine is Arab, that it will remain as long as the Arabs remain, that history will have its reckoning... My brothers, I speak of the Jordanian soldier who opened fire at a time of peace [thus] reflecting the desires and conscience of the Jordanians, and their resistance to an agreement of humiliation [the Israel-Jordan peace treaty] unparalleled in history... [We call] for the immediate release of the hero, Jordanian soldier Ahmad Al-Daqamseh, [in order] to put an end to his suffering. Otherwise, this government will be challenging the consensus of the Jordanian people..."
• The English-language Jordan Times, which reflects the kingdom's official views, doesn't say. We were unable to find a single mention of him in today's web edition. Maybe tomorrow. And maybe not.
• The excitement of the people in his home town is captured in a crude YouTube video from the early hours of this morning, mainly filled with the raucous sounds of car horns, Arabic music, women ululating and people shouting jubilantly. This was a happy, happy day.
• "An Arabic hashtag of Daqamseh’s name has been trending on Twitter over the past few days, and the social media outlet has served as a platform for a generally homogenous response." ["Ahmed Daqamseh, who killed seven Israeli children, widely praised on Jordanian social media", Albawaba, March 12, 2017]
• "May Allah preserve you in the house of your family, you who embody the most beautiful story of a hero from 1997 to 2017. May Allah have mercy on your father who did not have the chance to see you free, released. The hero, Ahmad Daqamseh." [Quoting this Arabic-language tweet]
• After arriving at his home this morning, Daqamseh declared he would "stay a soldier in the Jordanian armed forces... I went into jail as a soldier and now I consider myself and my sons soldiers in the armed forces" according to a report today in Israel National News. Based on Arabic news reports, they say he was given a jubilant reception in the village where he lived after his return.
• Times of Israel reports: "Hours after his release from 20 years in jail for gunning down seven Israeli schoolgirls, ex-Jordanian solider Ahmed Daqamseh declared on Sunday that Israelis are “human waste” that must be eradicated. Daqamseh made his remarks to al-Jazeera TV station, shortly after returning from jail to his home village of Ibdir to cheering friends and family. “The Israelis are the human waste of people, that the rest of the world has vomited up at our feet,” he told the TV station. “We must eliminate them by fire or by burial. If this is not done by our hands, the task will fall on the future generations to do.”
• The Jordanian news site Almadenah [here] today gives the released murderer full-celebrity coverage with numerous photos of dignitaries greeting him in his home village. Even if Arabic is not a language you speak or read, the photos are exceptionally eloquent (we prefer not to reproduce them here).
• Another Jordanian news site, JO24, quotes the 'hero' himself saying today in the full flush of his fame and media attention (our translation from Arabic) that he "does not believe in normalization with the Zionist entity; Palestine is one from the sea to the river... and there is no state called Israel". There's an Arabic video here recording these profound views of the "hero" as he speaks them.
• Also in Jordan (where she lives in ill-gotten freedom), the mastermind of our daughter Malki's murder - evidently recognizing in the sickening words of Daqamseh a kindred homicidal spirit - says (in this Arabic tweet) that they, his hateful and disgusting words, indicate the failure of the prison system. She's referring to the prisons of the Hashemite Kingdom. We can only hope she eventually gets to experience from the inside how successful or not the Jordanian penal system actually is. (No, not holding our breaths.)

If there's any news coverage of the feelings and responses of the families of those sweet girls he murdered, we haven't found it yet.

The same goes for any Jordanian or other Arab voices expressing disgust at the after-the-fact bravado of a man with a big gun who took aim at unarmed girls and has come to fame only because of what happened to them when he pulled the trigger again and again and again.