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.

05-May-20: From Congress, concern about how Jordanians deal with the fugitive terrorist in their midst

A meme we have used on Twitter to focus attention on how the world's
most wanted woman (as Fox News recently called her) is a celebrity
and hero in Jordan

A group of Republican members of the US Congress has despatched a letter to Her Excellency Dina Kawar, Jordan's ambassdor to Washington. It's reported by JNS in a May 4, 2020 syndicated article headlined "Congress members push for extradition of wanted terrorist Ahlam Tamimi from Jordan".

The law-makers who co-signed it are Reps. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) who took the lead; Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.); Ted Yoho (R-Fla.); Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.); Brian Mast (R-Fla.); Scott Perry (R-Penn.); and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

Ahlam Tamimi, whose obscene freedom in Jordan is at the heart of the letter, is the Hamas terrorist who repeatedly confesses proudly to her central role in the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzera on August 9, 2001. Our daughter Malki, 15, was one of Tamimi's victims.

US Federal charges against Tamimi were announced in Washington by the Department of Justice on March 14, 2017.

Some extracts from the letter:

• [Tamimi] has been showered with acclaim by the students of the Arab world’s most important graduate school of journalism, the Amman-based Jordan Media Institute, who declared her to be their "success model"... For five years, she traveled widely and often to deliver public speeches throughout Jordan and in numerous Arab countries beyond Jordan’s borders. Her theme has always centered on promoting terror and terrorists.
• Today, appallingly, Tamimi is a media celebrity, the subject of wide popular admiration. She has appeared publicly side-by-side with prominent political figures and received extraordinary recognition in Jordan’s mainstream press and television media as a respected commentator and as an object of Jordanian national pride...

Referring to Jordan's blunt refusal to extradite Tamimi as required by the 1995 Jordan/US Extradition Treaty, the letter says

• This is a matter of grave and growing concern to the Congress and to all Americans. The American view concerning the treaty is that it is certainly valid. It continues to be listed in the U.S. government’s authoritative Treaties in Force document... 
• Up until the Tamimi case and its Israeli victims, Jordan had extradited terrorists to the United States multiple times.

It goes on to refer to sanctions legislated by Congress and signed into law in December 2019 which, in the words of the JNS article

• subject to certain conditions, will apply to ‘a country which has notified the Department of State of its refusal to extradite to the United States any individual indicted for a criminal offense’ [certain details follow], and is ‘a country with which the United States maintains diplomatic relations and with which the United States has an extradition treaty,’ and ‘that country is in violation of the terms and conditions of the treaty.’
• The potential seriousness of these sanctions provisions reflect the deep concern of the Congress, the administration and the American people...

The Washington-based Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) was one of the prime movers behind the letter. EMET and its founder and president Sarah N. Stern have for years been raising awareness about the Tamimi case and were instrumental in Arnold Roth, one of this blog's writers, giving testimony to the House Oversight Committee of the US Congress four years ago. See
"08-Feb-16: Terror is now a legitimate career option in Pal Arab society but its enablers barely notice".

Mrs Stern has a statement in the JNS piece that we think bears emhasizing - that "as long as the United States turns a blind eye to the murderers of American citizens, we will be reinforcing their resolve against the United States".

She's certainly right.

13-Mar-20: It's been three years

Exactly a year ago, here on this blog, we posted a rueful summary of events that had taken place since the unsealing of US Federal charges against our child's killer on March 14, 2017, two years earlier.

You can view that post at "14-Mar-19: Two years after Federal charges are unsealed, Ahlam Tamimi remains free. How is this happening?"

While it describes important speeches by US justice officials, along with some meaningful decisions (that were years in coming), the bottom line is the justice process was - and certainly still is - stuck.

In an affront to elementary notions of how justice should work, Ahlam Tamimi remains today, as she has since October 18, 2011, free in Jordan.

There, with the open and active support of the government and its legal system, she lives a dream life. She's unrestricted in her movements and able with ease to publish her terror-advocacy views widely. She and her many supporters are undisguisedly, even triumphantly, openly contemptuous of the efforts made by the United States and her victims to see her brought to American justice. She faces terrorism charges in Washington.

The grotesque savagery of which she openly boasts and to which she confesses has had not the smallest negative impact on her celebrity. Without doubt, the fame, celebrity and - yes - adulation Tamimi enjoys today in Jordan and elsewhere in the Arab world today is because of the innocents she brutally killed - and not in spite of those killings.

That so many of her victims are children, our daughter among them, appears to have enhanced her fame and standing.

Three years have now passed. Here are some of the events of this past year as reflected in our blog postings:

• "21-Mar-19: The Secretary of State is in Jerusalem": We made efforts to draw Secretary Pompeo into a discussion about the lack of material progress in bringing Tamimi into a US Federal court to face charges. We were rebuffed.
• "21-Mar-19: The Sbarro Massacre mastermind worries she isn't getting enough sympathy": A US official, Jason D. Greenblatt, who has never responded to any of our attempts to communicate with him, saw fit (we don't wonder any more about public officials and their values) to personally address Tamimi via Twitter. This provoked her to respond via a lengthy op ed in the Arabic media. We fisked her piece which we called a mixture of "outright lies, self-aggrandizing exaggerations and a small handful of intriguing revelations". Here's how we ended it: "The real take-away here is her toxic influence. This dedicated murderer, now living free as a bird, not in hiding, not on the run, in the capital of an Arab kingdom reckoned to be a US ally, has standing, celebrity and access to the media. What Tamimi says in her explosive region of the world has the potent and quickly-out-of-control flammable impact of a lit match in a field of tinder-dry brush. And even though much of what she has to say is plainly distorted, dishonest and provocative, we have not yet seen even a single instance where her appearance in the Arabic-language media includes criticism or even any serious analysis of the woman, her narrative or her views. We wish this would disturb other people as much as it disturbs us."
• "25-Mar-19: On justice and decency for American victims of terrorism: When US indignation leads to a troubling comparison" This is about extradition. We delved into a little-reported but enraging story that involves a Turkish terrorist who had just been freed from his German prison cell and then, despite US efforts to take him into custody in Germany and then extradite him to Washington, was promptly flown to Turkey where he of course disappeared. The part that interested us more than  the preamble was the fury expressed by the State Department of the US at what Germany did. The parallels with what Jordan is doing are strong. The Anti Defamation League in New York took up the matter and wrote what we think is an inspirational letter to the State Department.
• "02-Apr-19: Setting facts, ethics, context aside, Aljazeera salutes a couple of murderers" We wish people paid more attention to what Aljazeera is and does. Its chairman Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani served as a minister in Qatar's government in the eighties and nineties and he is a member of Qater's ruling family, the House of Thani. Aljazeera has some 80 bureaux and more than 100,000 employees distributed around the world. And when they decided to go market a mass murderer like Tamimi, there is major impact.
• "30-May-19: Paris, Amman, Washington: Extradition and what it can reveal about governments and terror" The legal basis on which Jordan claims it is free to ignore the US request to extradite Tamimi is highly problematic. We don't believe those claims get much respect among lawyers or experts in extradition. France's experience with Jordan's legal system underscores this and makes for disturbing reading.
• "11-Jul-19: Keeping Ahlam Tamimi safe: A Jordanian case for double jeopardy?" If you're looking for arguments that bolster the Jordanian case, they're not here. It's puzzling to us that Jordan's claims are taken apart by the news industry so rarely (meaning never). A Jordanian journalist called Kuttab exemplifies how ineffectually the thwarted extradition effort is handled by the media.
• "21-Jul-19: Jordan, peace and how little has actually changed" Jordan gets lots of good press and, on the whole, is greatly admired by many of the good and open-minded Jews we know. But our involvement with the Tamimi extradition makes us feel they're ignoring a great deal of the evidence. In this lengthy post, we include this: "When they want to, Jordan's official representatives can be quite talkative. A shame that on the subject of extraditing Ahlam Tamimi, they have not uttered a single official word as a government, leaving it to the media and their highest court to say the relatively little that has been offered to explain their indefensible policy. As for their official spokesperson in the United States, Ambassador Dina Kawar of Jordan's Washington embassy blocks us on Twitter. That of course doesn't change very much and certainly doesn't mean we will stop our efforts to be heard. But along with plenty of other evidence of Jordan being today very far from its moderate image, it contributes to the sense that they haven't really come a great distance since the days of [Jordanians] blowing up ancient synagogues on a massive scale and maliciously denying Jewish history."
• "02-Aug-19: Arnold Roth speaks about what the media don't report - about what has and what has not been done to bring Ahlam Tamimi to justice (YouTube)": "Ahead of the August 9th commemoration of 18 years since the horrific Sbarro Pizzeria terrorist massacre in Jerusalem in which 15 people were murdered, eight of whom were children, this is an interview with the father of one of those children, Malki Roth, age 15." (We're grateful for the fine work done by The Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), a Washington DC-based think tank and policy center headed by Sarah N. Stern who conducts this interview. 
• "11-Aug-19: What money can do: The Sbarro terrorists and the children of Ramot": Not much politics in this, but some serious thoughts on how money and the way it's used tells us a lot about where people stand on terrorism.
• "12-Aug-19: The pain of a child's murder: A burden of grief and injustice": Frimet Roth writes on the anniversary of the Sbarro massacre about how the pain of a child's murder is so inconceivable in our society that it is down-played. Swept under the carpet.
• "25-Aug-19: A rising sense of something awful started settling in": An excerpt from an interview of Arnold Roth conducted by Varda Meyers Epstein and published by the ElderofZiyon blog.
• "05-Sep-19: On thwarted justice and bearded women": A serious but rare article about our extradition efforts appeared in Israel's Haaretz newspaper, the paper edition. With a bizarre twist.
• "18-Sep-19: With Jordan's King Abdullah II visiting the United States again, things worth knowing": The first thing is to know just how often, and with how much respect, the absolute ruler of Jordan is received by his Washington hosts. 
• "29-Sep-19: As we prepare for the High Holy Day season": King Abdullah had breakast with a serious group of Jewish American leaders in New York. We have lots of questions. Most Americans don't because although this event, which has happened several times, got wide coverage in the Arabic media, it got almost none in the US. There are reasons for every aspect of what happened. But discovering what they are is a challenge.
• "03-Oct-19: What lies behind a decade of "progress" at an influential Jordanian graduate school": Knowing what has gone on at the Jordan Media Institute has been instructive to us but then we're troubled by so many aspects of how Tamimi stays free and Jordan remains in large measure uncriticized and unchallenged. Reporters and editors in the West seem both oblivious and uninterested. Read this if only to know where CNN's Richard Quest fits in.
• "08-Oct-19: Again: Jordan's inscrutable US relationship": Why do delegations of US politicians turn up every so often to make official visits to Jordan's king in his deluxe palace? This time it's principally about US Representative Jason Crow whose staff ignored us totally.
• "19-Oct-19: House Speaker Pelosi led an official visit today to the chief protector of our child's killer": Again: Why do delegations of US politicians turn up every so often to make official visits to Jordan's king in his deluxe palace? This time it's principally about Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; whose staff ignored us totally. Along with Ranking Member Mac Thornberry, House Armed Services Committee; Chairman Eliot Engel, House Foreign Affairs Committee; Chairman Bennie Thompson, Homeland Security Committee; Chairman Adam Schiff, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Congressman Ron Kind, House Ways and Means Committee; Congresswoman Susan Davis, House Armed Services Committee; Congressman Stephen Lynch, Chairman, House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on National Security; Congresswoman Elaine Luria, House Armed Services Committee. They all ignored all our questions.
• "03-Nov-19: In Washington, a step towards bringing the Sbarro bomber to justice": This is important. It starts with this opening: "We report here on an unexpected, modestly encouraging development in our efforts to bring to justice the fugitive Hamas savage who bombed a Jerusalem pizzeria because of the children inside it. Jewish children, as it happens. Exactly whom the bomber was targeting."
• "12-Nov-19: On Jordan, the US and the children killed in a pizzeria": Worth reading if you want a taste of the diabolical evil being shielded via the thwarted Tamimi extradition. But here for the first time, we write about the US explicitly rejecting Jordan's view of the extradition treaty. It's a major step forward.
• "13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister": An important article, if we say it ourselves. Almost totally ignored by the world's media (but not by the Arab world), Jordan now says openly and proudly (after dodging the issue for years) that it has no intention of respecting what the US calls a valid treaty. It will take the side of the Sbarro bomber, and it doesn't care who knows. Or objects.
• "16-Dec-19: Like talking to the wall": Once more: Why do delegations of US politicians turn up every so often to make official visits to Jordan's king in his deluxe palace? This time it's principally about Chairman of the House Armed Forces Committtee, Representative Adam Smith. And yes, his staff - after appearing to be ready to dialogue - ignored us too.
• "17-Nov-19: Jordan's king to be honored for profound commitment to peace and moderation" We remained as flabbergasted today as when this happened.
• "15-Dec-19: The Sbarro bomber trashes the ruler who protects her from the FBI" No part of the Western media reported this public insulting of Jordan's king by the Sbarro bomber. Why is that? 
• "31-Jan-20: Fox News break ranks with the mainstream media on Tamimi and Jordan" Starts with this: "For us, it's something of a milestone. On Wednesday, over on the heavily-trafficked Fox News website , there's an informative long-form piece that in large measure deals with our efforts to see Ahlam Tamimi, the Jordanian Islamist who masterminded the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in 2001, finally brought before US justice. Written by Hollie McKay, the article is..." Please read.

Tamimi's freedom, celebrity and high public profile in the Arab world serve as a public and extraordinarily brazen encouragement to more acts of terrorism. The indefensible role of Jordan's leadership in clear violation of the country's treaty obligations to the United States magnifies the impact.

Our efforts to see Tamimi brought to US justice go on.

To stay in touch, we have a private (no one will ever see it except us) mailing list we use irregularly to keep supporters informed. To be on it, send your name, city and email address to thisongoingwar@gmail.com (click). And follow us on Twitter @ThisOngoingWar

Thank you.