21-Jul-21: After Jordan's king visited the State Department yesterday

From a State Department tweet of yesterday's meeting

Here's an observation the mainstream media probably won't share with their consumers about the very long royal visit to the US currently being undertaken by Jordan's king, queen and crown prince. [For some of the background, "21-Jul-21: In welcoming Jordan's king to Washington, we wanted him to be reminded of the ongoing Tamimi extradition scandal"]

His Majesty King Abdullah II spent some of yesterday in the company of senior figures in the State Department including the Secretary of State and, since we see him in the photos, the current US ambassador to Jordan, Henry Wooster. It was a working visit, with an official agenda and many participants. 

What did they discuss? 

Oddly, at a time when almost everything leaks and gets discussed in the world's public forums - which means on the Internet - it's hard to say. 

Our principal focus, as everyone coming to this blog knows, is with Jordan's harboring of the bomber who blew up the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem twenty years ago. Jordan has a treaty with the US, and the US has issued criminal proceedings against the bomber who has repeatedly confessed in public that she did it. Fifteen innocents were murdered in the explosion, two of them US nationals, and one of those was our daughter Malki.

Since the day those US charges against Ahlam Ahmad Al-Tamimi were announced in March 2017 right up until today, there has been a deliberate fog of ambiguity and opacity over US efforts to get Jordan to hand her over for trial as required by the 1995 Extradition Treaty. 

The result has been that the boastful killer's spectacular career and freedom have continued practically without pause. She's free today, not living in hiding, not silenced by Jordan's notoriously manipulative government and not on the margins of Jordanian society.

Quite the opposite.

At the end of yesterday's well-publicized meeting between the Jordanian delegation and the State Department people, there was a press briefing, presided over by State's spokesperson, Ned Price. 

As important as the Tamimi case is, and as much as we have tried to create media and pubic awareness of the open deception by two governments over what is and is not being done to bring Tamimi to her long overdue appointment with a federal court, here is the only official public comment made by the American side. It comes from the official transcript of the State Department Press Briefing (July 20, 2021)

NED PRICE, DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON
JULY 20, 2021

QUESTION: Can I ask you very quickly about Jordan, the meeting with the king this morning and the Secretary? I just want to know if the Tamimi extradition issue came up. As you’re aware, last year the then-ambassador nominee but now the ambassador told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that withholding aid or aid could be used as leverage to secure her extradition to the States to face murder charges.

MR PRICE: Well, I expect we’ll have a readout of the Secretary’s meeting with His Majesty the King later today. When it comes to Ms. al-Tamimi, she is on the FBI’s most wanted list for her role in the 2001 Hamas attack in Jerusalem. We continue to seek her extradition. We’ll continue to work to ensure that she faces justice.

QUESTION: Yeah. Well, did it come up?

MR PRICE: I’m not in a position to speak to the meeting, but we’ll have a readout —

QUESTION: Well, are you – I mean, are you – has this administration yet raised it with – raised the matter with Jordanian authorities, the King or not? Or is this something that would have just come up for the first time today?

MR PRICE: This issue has been raised with our Jordanian partners.

What did the Jordanians say when it was raised? How did the US respond to King Abdullah's response? Does he know about the Tamimi case? Does he know about the 1995 Extradition Treaty proudly signed by his father?

Imagine getting answers like this from your doctor, your lawyer, your spouse, your child, your work colleague. We all have some sense of when we're being treated like idiots. This was one of those moments for us.

The people at Fox News where we were interviewed for two different programs earlier this week turned to State for some comment, too. This is what they got.

A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Friday the department won't preview any diplomatic discussions with the Jordan delegation and won't discuss private correspondence with the Roths. But the State Department said it's committed to bringing Al-Tamimi to the United States for prosecution. 

"Al-Tamimi is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list for her role in a 2001 Hamas terrorist attack in Jerusalem," the State Department told Fox News. "The United States continues to seek her extradition and will continue to work to ensure she faces justice."  

Source: "Family of 15-year-old terrorist attack victim asks Biden to bring justice for daughter", Marisa Schultz, Fox News, July 18, 2021 

You could understand that the day to day of government decision making is not something that gets discussed very much out on the open. And nor should it.

But the Jordan/Tamimi/extradition case is different. Tamimi was charged on March 14, 2017. Those charges were signed off by a federal judge nearly four years before that, in the summer of 2013, eight full years ago. 

Jordan's highest court, the Court of Cassation, ruled six days later that - whether she's guilty or not guilty as charged - Jordan will not hand her over to the justice system of the United States as the treaty requires because the treaty is not valid.

The treaty is valid. What's not valid is the claim by Jordan that there is a legal impediment, just one, a very technical one easily fixed. The US says, though in the quietest of voices, that the treaty is valid. Has the US ever raised its voice? Has it threatened? Has it done anything at all to fix this standoff with a kingdom whose existence is underwritten by massive US financial aid and by American military resources?

No one on the US side, not under Obama, not under Trump and till now at least not under Biden, is willing to speak clearly on this. The Jordanians have avoided all comment to people outside their kingdom though Jordanian domestic audiences have been told in Arabic ["13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister"] by their deputy prime minister and (his other role) foreign minister that Jordan does not have to hand the bomber over to the Americans. Jordan respects and abides by the law, Mr Ayman H. Safadi said, and the law does not allow it.

He is in the photo above and is in Washington with his king today. How valuable it would be if some enterprising speaking-truth-to-power reporter grabbed the opportunity to ask him to state Jordan's Tamimi policy to an American audience.

Being given the silent treatment isn't a new experience for us in this long pursuit of justice after the murder of our beloved Malki. But our message now to anyone who cares to listen is that it doesn't serve any good purpose and it needs to be stopped. American vagueness on the matter of getting justice done and bringing a committed terrorist to trial for the killing-by-terror of US nationals has serious consequences. 

We have almost no power in standing up to the cruel suppression of our voices by elected and unelected public officials. The only power we do have is to move public opinion and as much as we can, and with the help of others, we will. 

Because what's being done by government figures in this scandal is an ongoing disgrace.

06-May-21: So will the injustice continue to be ignored?

From the Jerusalem Post paper edition, April 30, 2021

A story by Yonah Bob, a veteran journalist at the Jerusalem Post, published this past week pulls together some of the numerous strands of our efforts to bring Ahlam Tamimi to justice.

She's the Jordanian woman who freely admits to planting the bomb that destroyed the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria. 

Our daughter Malki was one of the many children whose lives ended there that day.

In a piece entitled "Will Ahlam Tamimi be extradited from Jordan for the murder of Malki Roth?" and published in the paper's online edition (as well as in this past Friday's paper edition), Bob recounts the basic facts of the August 9, 2001 massacre orchestrated by Ahlam Tamimi, as well as the terrorism trial that followed at whose conclusion she was

sentenced to 16 full life terms in jail, but was released in 2011, as part of the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange.

The narrative jumps forward to March 14, 2017 when the US government let it be known, while unsealing long-secret terrorism charges against Tamimi under US law ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and her extradition is requested"], that it had

issued a request for Tamimi’s extradition. The reason? Roth was not only Israeli, but American as well. Given that Jordan’s King Abdullah is heavily reliant on US military and economic assistance, quick compliance could have expected. Instead, what has followed according to Malki’s father, Arnold Roth, has been “an egregious failure of justice.”

If you follow this blog of ours, you are in a position to know how calling the Tamimi case and the kid-gloves treatment of Jordan a failure of justice is no exaggeration.

The Jerusalem Post story briefly looks at two of the largest roadblocks impeding the progress of efforts to see Tamimi brought in chains from her safe harbor in Jordan to face criminal charges in Washington DC. 

One is expressed this way:

Yes, the US has huge leverage over Jordan – but how hard does it want to push?

That raises complex political and geostrategic issues that, just as in real life, are hinted at in the article but barely discussed.

The second has to do with this peculiar twist:

...Jordan signed a treaty with the US decades ago. But shortly after the 2017 extradition request, a Jordanian court ruled that the parliament had never ratified it. So the court said the treaty was not in effect and the government was barred from extraditing Tamimi.

The Court of Cassation, Amman [Image Source]

The Jordanian position was expressed by its highest judicial forum, the Court of Cassation. In a 2017 decision handed down just six days after the criminal complaint against Tamimi was unsealed and announced in Washington, that court in Amman gave a single reason why, in Bob's words, the treaty was not in effect. It should have been ratified, the judges ruled. 

We wrote about this at the time: "20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"

And since the parliament did not ratify, the treaty - it was said - did not give Jordan a basis for complying with the US request for her to be handed over, allowing Tamimi herself, with the help of Aljazeera, to preposterously adopt the role of perplexed and misunderstood victim ["24-Mar-17: Our daughter's grinning killer is shocked the US is pursuing her and for no obvious reason"]

The ratification alibi is a claim that has never been made in a public way by any senior Jordanian official with the sole exception of its current deputy prime minister [we wrote about that too: "13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister"]. No one else - no Jordanian ambassador or other senior diplomat, no one speaking in the name of the Hashemite Royal Court - has ever addressed the issue for the record. 

It's almost as if they're too embarrassed. For just one reason, whatever the merits of the argument that Jordan's parliament never ratified the treaty after it was signed all those years ago, what's stopped them from doing it since then? No Jordanian source denies that they could simply ratify it this afternoon. Clearly there's something seriously disingenuous going on.

For its part, the United States has at all relevant times, right up until today, listed its 1995 Extradition Treaty with Jordan in the authoritative US catalogue of treaties it has with other countries. Check it out in the current and most recent online edition of "Treaties in Force" (sub-titled "A List of Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States in Force on January 1, 2020"), a 570-page long PDF compiled and kept updated by the Treaty Affairs Staff, Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State. 

The treaty with Jordan is listed there on page 245. The notation shows it was signed in Washington on March 28, 1995 and entered into force on July 29, 1995.

We don't know why reporters almost never refer to the Treaties in Force listing and ask the obvious questions. But the reality is they don't. Perhaps acknowledging that the treaty exists would lead to further questions which bring on discomfort and even more questions. 

Inside Jordan's parliament [Image Source]

The treaty exists. What's more, it has served as the basis for a series of extraditions by which Jordan willingly handed over fugitive Jordanian terrorists to the US. They were then put them on trial on US soil and US law and sent to US prisons. Yonah Bob's article names them.

With this in mind, you might expect a full-throated statement by senior US officials laying out a principled position. Something (we're making it up) along the lines of this:

"The United States, a supportive and generous strategic ally, believes Jordan has a clear and unambiguous obligation under our quarter-century old strategic agreement signed with His Majesty King Husssein, the revered late father of His Majesty King Abdullah II, today's king, to hand over to US justice the Jordanian fugitive who says she placed the bomb that killed so many innocents including two US nationals. Respectfully and in the name of our vital bilateral relations as well as justice, we expect Jordan to do this without further delay, thereby expressing honorable compliance with the principles that underpin our mutually beneficial alliance" and so on

but you would be disappointed. 

No US government voice has said anything like it. Not during the Obama presidency when the prosecution efforts got under way. And not during the four years of the Trump presidency when the criminal charge, sealed under conditions of strict secrecy in 2013, was finally unsealed in a blaze of welcome calls for justice to be done ["15-Mar-17: Sbarro and justice"].

What can we expect now? The Jerusalem Post offers this guarded view:

If there is hope, it might be if either the Biden administration shows a greater readiness to confront Jordan than either the Obama or Trump administrations, or if a new potential [Israeli] prime minister, like Bennett takes an interest in the issue. The coming months will show whether Biden, Bennett or any other new face has an interest in the issue, or whether the injustice will continue.

Since this is about hope, there's room be optimistic. Stay tuned.

16-Nov-20: Justice, the Tamimi extradition and what Jordan tells Arabic media but not the world

Jordan's foreign minister speaks: We quote him in this post

We track Jordan's Arabic-language media closer than many outside observers. Still, we missed the exchange below until it was highlighted in an Arabic-language Twitter post [here]. Now we're catching up.

The tweet itself is dated October 6, 2020, a few days after Jordan forcibly expelled Nizar Tamimi to another country (evidently Qatar) with very little advance notice. We'll get to him in a moment. 

The tweet refers to a scene that played out in what appears to be a conference room of the Foreign Ministry of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Amman, the capital. A 50 second long video (here) captures the interaction. Here's the brief dialogue in Arabic-to-English translation arranged by us:

Unidentified Jordanian journalist: 

“Regarding the freed detainee Ahlam Tamimi, there are American pressures on Jordan...”

Ayman H. Safadi, Foreign Minister of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: 

Once more, sir, we are a country which respects the law. Jordanian law does not allow handing over a Jordanian citizen to a third country unless there are agreements. There is no agreement between Jordan and the US to hand over Ahlam Tamimi. Consequently there is no legal basis for handing her over as we adhere to the law in this case. There were requests from several parties in America to hand her over since there is a pending lawsuit against her. We say, because we act according to law, the law does not permit us to hand her over and consequently we shall not hand her over.”

Our Arabic-to-English translator thinks this was "some kind of periodical briefing. Both the flags at the foreign minister's sides are Jordanian. So it's unlikely this exchange was part of a formal visit of, say, some foreign dignitary. But it's hard to be certain."

The journalist who posed the question

Keep the foreign minister's assertion in mind - that Jordan, in safeguarding a confessed terrorist bomber, keeping her out of the reach of US justice, Federal criminal charges and a date in court, is acting in accordance with "the law" - while we expand the discussion.

This happens not to be the first time he has said this. 

We wrote about it almost exactly a year ago in an open letter to Mr Safadi ["13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister"] based on a report we spotted on the popular Jordanian news-site JO24. That, in our view, was the first-ever public statement by any Jordanian government official that the kingdom will not hand over to US law enforcement the woman who spearheaded the Sbarro massacre.

And if you're wondering: no, of course he gave no response to our November 2019 open letter. In the bitter reality of our experience, no Jordanian government official has ever responded to any of the communications we have directed at them in the wake of our daughter's murder. 

Our Malki, in case the narrative in unfamiliar to you, was one of many Jewish children blown up in the bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria filled with Jewish children. 

The Jordanian terrorist who selected the target site, who brought the bomb, a human bomb, to the door of the pizzeria, who fled the scene after telling him to wait with detonating his exploding guitar case until she was safely distant, and refers publicly to what she did as "my operation" and to the Jewish children inside as the reason she selected Sbarro Jerusalem for destruction, is today living in Jordan. She was born and educated there and is sheltered by Jordan today. She had her own made-in-Jordan TV show for five years until September 2016 and has lectured throughout Jordan and the Arab world for years, spreading a message of support for terror and lethal bigotry. (There's a great deal more background in an epic David Horovitz article that appeared in Times of Israel earlier this year.)

Back to the Jordanian politician. 

Mr Safadi is a figure of some significance. He has held the portfolio of foreign minister since early 2017. To judge by the fact that he has kept it through a succession of recent governments that have briefly come and gone, he has the king's confidence. He is also Jordan's current deputy prime minister. 

US-educated Safadi's claim, at least in the form it was published last year, is untrue. What he said then is that "several US authorities asked Jordan to extradite Jordanian citizen Ahlam Al-Tamimi" and that "Jordan respects and abides by the law" and "the law does not allow it... Jordanian law does not allow the extradition of a citizen to a third country and there is no legal basis for the delivery of Ahlam al-Tamimi." 

The truth is Jordan not only does allow extradition; it has in fact extradited Jordanians repeatedly to the United States. 

Like most nations, Jordan has treaties that regulate how this is done. It has one with the United States that was signed in 1995 and that the United States says is valid, in effect and binding. 

This is made clear (though it was never in serious doubt) by an announcement of the State Department that we quoted here a year ago: "12-Nov-19: On Jordan, the US and the children killed in a pizzeria". It s also listed in a public document with the eminently appropriate name "Treaties in Force". The 2020 edition of TIF lists the Jordan/US treaty at page 245. There it records that it was signed on March 28, 1995 and entered into force on July 29, 1995. For purposes of American law, the TIF is authoritative.

Less than a year after that November 2019 clarification, the US re-stated somewhat more forcefully its official view on the validity of the Jordan treaty. It did this on June 24, 2020 using language that people in the know have told us was intended to send a clear message.

Here's some background to that. 

Every year, the Bureau of Counterterrorism at the US State Department issues a public document called Country Reports on Terrorism. This is done by way of complying with a Federal law ["22 U.S. Code § 2656f - Annual country reports on terrorism"]. The annual reports are meant to give Congress a detailed, country-by-country yearly update on how global efforts to defeat terror are faring. 

The 2020 edition of the Country Reports [online here] addresses Jordan and its years-long thwarting of the Ahlam Tamimi extradition. Here's what it says:

In 2019, Jordan did not extradite Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, who has been charged in the United States with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the United States resulting in death.  The charge is related to her participation in the August 9, 2001, suicide bomb attack at a pizzeria in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals.  Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack.  Following publication of the 2018 Country Reports on Terrorism, Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi confirmed that U.S. authorities asked Jordan to extradite Tamimi, and he expressed the view that Jordan’s constitution does not allow the extradition of a Jordanian citizen to a third country.  The United States regards the extradition treaty with Jordan as valid and in force.

People sensitive to the lexicon of diplomacy say the choice of words indicates the US is communicating that it has gotten fed up with Jordan's baseless claim that “there is no legal basis for the delivery of Ahlam al-Tamimi”. It wants the Tamimi extradition to happen. 

Some more background:

In the summer of 2019, we entered into correspondence with State Department officials about the Tamimi extradition and the slightly bizarre biting-the-hand-that-feeds-you game Jordan plays. 

We reminded them of how Jordan's highest court, the Court of Cassation, had handed down its ruling in the Tamimi case less than a week after the US announced charges against her ["20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"]. The kingdom's senior jurists decided the treaty was invalid, basing that on one ground: that it ought to have been ratified by the parliament. And wasn't.

In addressing the State Department, we were conscious of how the Jordanian jurists could have said but did not that (a) there were additional grounds for invalidating the treaty. In fact, they referred to just one. And (b) that additional legal claims - such as the doctrine of double jeopardy - applied and would operate to prevent Jordan from handing over Tamimi. They referred to none.

Double jeopardy comes up from time to time as a reason not to extradite when it's raised by Jordanian reporters with no legal training. Also by Jordanian diplomats in private, but never public, statements about which we have been briefed. Not one of the several experts on the law of extradition whom we have consulted sees double jeopardy as having any relevance at all in the Tamimi case. It has no relevance to the Jordan/US treaty. It's been explained to us that the treaty itself indicates the doctrine has no application.

Some additional dimensions to consider:

• The treaty could have been ratified that very day. Or the day after. Or any other day in the quarter of a century since it was signed and put into effect. 
• The US believes every i was dotted and every t crossed - that all the technical requirements were complied with and satisfied. But even if there had been some parliamentary lapse, the ratification could have been dealt with after the fact. Where there's a will etc. 
• Jordan's relationship with the US is super important for Jordan. It's arguably far more important than say Jordan's ties with Ukraine. The Jordan/Ukraine extradition treaty is treated by both sides as a valid legal obligation. In fact, we asked Jordan's ambassador in Washington about it by email last year. She ignored the points we made. She ignored us. She ignored a letter [the JTA's syndicated report, and our blog post] from seven US law-makers who raised similar issues. (To us, something is seriously wrong when the official representative of a purportedly-close ally on the payroll of US taxpayers treats respectful and important questions with disdain.) The judges did not turn their minds to this aspect. But we should. And so should friends of Jordan. 
• The US is by far Jordan's largest supplier of funding. Jordan is the third-largest recipient of US aid in the world. A reasonable person might imagine that in such circumstances, Jordan would make really serious efforts to honor its obligations to the US. It appears a reasonable person would be wrong. And the judges made no mention of the issue. One might argue it’s not their job. But the same certainly cannot be said about Jordan’s parliament, not to mention its king. 
• Jordan has numerous extradition treaties with countries other than the US. Were those treaties all ratified before they were put into effect? From our research, the answer is definitively no. The judges didn't ask but it is a matter that would surely trouble anyone concerned with the "rule of law" aspect of long-thwarted Tamimi extradition.

• 

  The October 2020 media event at the Jordanian Foreign Ministry
  

  Now this important observation: Just because the Jordanian court was told that no ratification was done, it still might not be true. As we describe below, the truth appears to be that there was indeed an act of ratification. Or more precisely, that Jordan may have been able to give the US what are called "instruments of ratification" - and no one cares to talk about it. 
• In fact, we were told by a US Department of Justice source that the US was neither asked to advise on this; nor was it raised in the very brief Jordanian court hearing. It appears no representative of the United States was present in court when the Court of Cassation handed down a ruling on the validity of a vital agreement between the two countries. We of course weren't there, know nothing about Jordanian rules of procedure and are left to rely on what US administration officials with knowledge of the matter say. And that's what we heard from them. Call us surprised. 
• No one is going to argue that Jordan is one of the world's paragons of democratic practice. Its media, in particular its newspapers, are famously unfree. The king appoints the prime minister and may dismiss him or accept his resignation. He has the sole power to appoint senior military leaders, justices of the constitutional court, all 75 members of the senate, cabinet ministers, dissolve both houses of parliament. The king must approve laws before they take effect and can issue royal decrees which are not subject to parliamentary scrutiny. He commands the armed forces, declares war and ratifies treaties [Source: Jordan: Background and U.S. Relations, Congressional Research Service, Updated to June 18, 2020]. To state the obvious, in Jordan, what the Hashemite king says, goes. In any tension between constitution and realpolitik, no one should be in doubt about how the Jordanian outcome is determined.

But what if there were documentary evidence that the ratification did in fact happen at the relevant time? What if the claims made by (and perhaps to) the judges of the Court of Cassation and on which their decision was based are factually incorrect?

The following quote resulted from one of those email exchanges between us and a State Department official who we understand was authoritative in the context of US/Jordan relations. That official told us

In the specific case of Ahlam Tamimi, we continue to advocate that the Government of Jordan arrest her and agree to extradite her to the United States. To date, the Government of Jordan has been unwilling to accede to our requests because they have claimed the bilateral extradition treaty we signed in 1995 is null. We continue to dispute the Jordanian government’s claim, as we exchanged instruments of ratification, bringing the treaty into force on July 29, 1995, and the treaty has not been terminated. I hope the information I provided above answers your question. Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

We asked whether this statement could be quoted publicly. Yes was the answer.

This week, November 14, 2020, to be specific, marked the 85th birthday of King Abdullah II's widely respected father, King Hussein. The Arabic media - both conventional and social media - are replete even now, two days later, with tributes to the older king's nobility, leadership and so on. We have been thinking about all of that this weekend as we ponder the misleading and mostly unchallenged assertion by one of Jordan's most influential figures that the treaty is a nullity. 

Front page of New York Times, August 4, 1995

The New York Times in an August 4, 1995 article on Jordan tracks the pursuit of one of the plotters of the first lethal attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, the one carried out in 1993. 

That was when a rented truck filled with explosives was driven into the complex's underground parking garage and "killed 6 people, injured more than 1,000 and shook America's sense of immunity from foreign terrorism" ["Suspect Is Said to Be Longtime Friend of Bombing Mastermind"]. 

Eyad Ismoil, a Palestinian immigrant working in a grocery store in Dallas, was the driver. The Times report says Ismoil fled to Jordan on a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight that same day, a few hours after the bombing, "prompting a two-and-a-half-year manhunt". He was eventually tracked to a "refugee camp" 30 miles north of Amman and though "the F.B.I. knew his whereabouts last winter, the Americans could not arrest him until King Hussein of Jordan signed a new extradition treaty with the United States last week... Local authorities in Jordan arrested Mr. Ismoil on Sunday as he left a class at a university, and they turned him over to F.B.I agents at a military airfield on Wednesday night." He was promptly flown to New York City, tried, convicted and three years later sentenced to a term of 280 years in prison. He remains behind US bars.

So now, some speculation. 

If he were alive today, what would King Hussein, who died in 1999, say to the way his kingdom has put arguably the most strategic of its strategic foreign relations at risk? 

Jordan has done that by (a) denying that a milestone treaty personally championed by him is now being impugned by his successors and (b) standing in appalling, incomprehensible solidarity with a woman, arguably the most wanted female fugitive now alive, who is a celebrity chiefly because of the bombing she carried out in order to kill as many children as possible.

When we say "at risk", we're thinking of a December 2019 law enacted by the US Congress and immediately signed into law by the President of the US. Sarah N. Stern's fine analysis in the Israel Hayom newspaper that same month ["A long-awaited holiday gift for terror victims"] cogently lays out the issues. 

In effect, that sanction law says Jordan's demeaning of its treaty with the US puts at meaningful risk the massive foreign aid it has gotten annually over recent years from the US - amounting to some $7.3 Billion for the period 2016-2020. As little as most American news-readers know about this (since there has been virtual no media coverage in the West), the story is widely followed in the Arab world where it's considered alarming.

Is there a realistic chance of the sanction being applied, given the transition now underway in Washington? It was not applied last year; it has not been applied so far this year either. The prospects for next year are unknown but probably low.

But there are other signs - for instance, the forced expulsion of Tamimi's husband, Nizar Tamimi from Jordan just six weeks ago ["04-Oct-20: The Sbarro bomber's husband has been forced to leave Jordan: A snapshot of developments"]. We mentioned him at the start of this post.

These suggest Washington has an interest in seeing Jordan confront its inner demons that somehow make it acceptable to safeguard and even celebrate a woman famous principally for the Jewish children she boasts of killing.

With due respect to Jordan's foreign minister, the rule of law is not a simple matter of adhering to parliamentary procedure and protocol. It is also about the moral and ethical precepts that a nation's laws are intended to implement. 

 

Malki at the heart of a family celebration some weeks before

the end of her life. She never reached her 16th birthday.

Given where we have been these past several years, we don't expect to find justice waiting at the door, though of course we remain quietly optimistic. We would be more optimistic if the news industry showed some small degree of interest in our pursuit of justice. But the de facto embargo on most reporting of Ahlam Tamimi's incredible career - her charmed life in Jordan, the way a strategic ally of the United States sticks its finger in American eyes - is a painful reality in our lives and in our efforts. 

We believe we would have seen Tamimi in leg-chains and orange overalls in a Federal court house long ago if not for Jordan's tail-wagging-the-dog determination to keep her safe and famous. Ask yourself, having gotten this far into our post, if you already knew any of these details from mainstream news sources. (Not everyone will have read the paragraphs before this one so spoiler alert: No, you haven't seen, heard or read almost any part of the analysis above in the mainstream media because in an astonishingly broad consensus the mainstream media bury the story and suppress those details. Those words aren't polemical or argumentative but simply state the facts. There is no alternative view; as odd as this may seem, we're simply right.)

We're determined to press forward. 

The right way to view our efforts is as a quest by bereaved parents in search of justice following their child's murder. It is not at all a political crusade. Nor does it stem for any appetite for vengeance. 

Meanwhile watch this space and please sign our petition. 

13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister

Jordan's Foreign Minister [Image Source]

This open letter is written by Frimet and Arnold Roth. They are the parents of Malka Chana Roth, murdered at the age of 15 in the Jerusalem Sbarro massacre, a bombing attack organized by Hamas and spearheaded by a Jordan student/reporter who has been sheltered, shielded and honored in and by Jordan since 2011.

To: His Excellency Minister Dr Ayman Hussein Abdullah Al-Safadi,

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

Queen Alia Airport Street,
Amman 11180

Jordan

Dear Dr Safadi,

Thank you. In an exceedingly rare announcement yesterday as Jordan's foreign minister (as well as its deputy prime minister), you spoke publicly and for the record about how the Hashemite kingdom views the request it received officially in March 2017 from the United States to extradite fugitive bomber Ahlam Tamimi to Washington ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and her extradition is requested"].

As you know, the US began quietly and without publicity requesting this from Jordan four years before that, starting in 2013. Jordan has refused the entire time.

In simple terms ( and not using the words you used), here is what you conveyed:

Jordan has rejected the US request for some years. We confirm that Jordan still rejects it, no matter what the Americans want.

Tamimi, as you may know, faces charges in a United States federal court for her central role in the Hamas-inspired massacre that took the lives of many people, half of them children. One of those children, Your Excellency, was our daughter Malki who was just fifteen years old.

As her parents, what you have just done is, in a certain way, helpful to our efforts. Let us explain.

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.

In the last two weeks, the United States via an official announcement of its foreign ministry, the US State Department, has clarified in a gratifying way its rejection of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan's claims that the 1995 Extradition Treaty signed by the late King Hussein and President Bill Clinton's administration is invalid. 

You are invited to read what we wrote about that US statement just yesterday: "12-Nov-19: On Jordan, the US and the children killed in a pizzeria".

This is also well reported in the online English-language edition of Haaretz. (You can click here to download the printed version.)

Also yesterday, possibly unwittingly, you spoke as Jordan's Foreign Minister to a public event and put Jordan's position - and presumably your own personal views as well - on the record.

We are pleased that you did. Pleased enough that we want others to know. As many others as possible. And especially the small tribe of US Congressional figures making frequent pilgrimages to Jordan and to its king ["09-Nov-19: Another delegation from US Congress at Jordan's royal court. Did extradition come up?"]

We found your blunt and deliberate words on the popular Jordanian news-site JO24. (We remember it as one of the Jordanian TV channels that lovingly provided Jordanian audiences with real-time, live video coverage of Ahlam Tamimi's wedding to her cousin Nizar on June 16, 2012).

Safadi: We have received US requests to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi. We confirm our commitment to the law that prevents it (JO24)

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants Affairs, Ayman Safadi, said that several US authorities asked Jordan to extradite Jordanian citizen Ahlam Al-Tamimi, pointing out that Jordan respects and abides by the law "and the law does not allow it".

Safadi said during a press conference to talk about the expiry of the annexes of the Wadi Araba agreement related to the areas of Baqoura and Ghamr, on Monday, that Jordan is a state that respects the law. Jordanian law does not allow the extradition of a citizen to a third country and there is no legal basis for the delivery of Ahlam al-Tamimi.
He pointed out that there are requests from US authorities requesting the extradition of Tamimi, "but Jordan deals in accordance with the law and the law does not allow extradition."
In late March 2017, the Court of Cassation upheld a decision by the Amman Court of Appeal to reject Washington's request for the extradition of Ahlam al-Tamimi, accused of involvement in an attack that killed two US citizens in 2001.
Tamimi spent 10 years in Israeli jails after being sentenced to 16 years [might be a machine translation error - see below] in prison for participating in a martyrdom operation of the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in the Sbarro restaurant in West Jerusalem in August 2001 in which 15 people were killed and 122 others were injured.
The occupation [a reference to Israel] released Tamimi and handed over to Jordan in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.
[Source: "Safadi: We have received US requests to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi. We confirm our commitment to the law that prevents it", JO24, November 12, 2019 - the original article is in Arabic; the English text is via Google Translate]

(For background to the US extradition request, see "03-Nov-19: In Washington, a step towards bringing the Sbarro bomber to justice")

You are the latest in a line of foreign ministers - eight of them so far - to have served Jordan since its absolute monarch King Abdullah II ascended to the throne. You are the first to have publicly expressed, to the best of our knowledge, a frank and open disdain for an entirely proper request made by the United States, your country's most important strategic partner.

We confess to being surprised by how inaccurate your claims are, at least in the form reported by the Jordan media. Naturally, if they misquoted you (which sometimes happens to politicians), we assume you will see to it that the record is fixed.

Meanwhile, on the assumption that what we see does reflect what you said, allow us to point out some of what you got wrong. And some matters that ought to be more on your mind than they seem to be.

• You say "Jordanian law does not allow the extradition of a citizen to a third country". That's simply and absolutely not true of Jordanian law. 
• It's also not what Jordan's highest court said in its March 2017 decision to prohibit Tamimi's extradition. The court's argument has to do with a narrow, highly technical alleged flaw in how the treaty was accepted by Jordan. 
• And by the way, officials in the US State Department have told us the allegations of a flaw are simply untrue as a matter of fact. 
• As you surely also know, even if there was a technical flaw, it could have been fixed by Jordan's parliament (whose members are by and large selected by the king, according to this Wikipedia entry) at any time. Including this afternoon. Somehow no one in Jordan has gotten around to even trying.
• Leaving the dubious legal claims about the treaty aside, it's a fact that Jordan's still-active extradition treaty with the US went into full legal effect on July 29, 1995 and that both countries treated it as being valid and effective for the next 22 years. Jordan, as you know, has extradited several Jordanians to the US. We can give you the details of several of them who are currently serving long US prison sentences. Just ask.
• What's more, based on things we have learned from open source materials, Jordan has never once failed to extradite fugitive terrorists to the US when asked to do so - until the Tamimi case.
• Is there really any doubt (as you seem to claim) about Jordan having extradition treaties with other countries? The list certainly includes at least Syria, Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Algeria, Kuwait and Azerbaijan [all documented here, at page 11] as well as Lebanon and France. And to our personal knowledge via connections in Canberra, an extradition treaty is currently being negotiated between Jordan and Australia where our murdered daughter Malki was born. We are fairly certain the real list is longer than what we have managed to find.
• Then there's the money: Jordan, which struggles economically and has huge burdens, is monumentally dependent on US aid. The US provides far more foreign aid to Jordan than anyone else does.
• In fact, on scanning the same Arabic media source that reports your disappointing statement about disavowing your country's treaty with the US, we were startled to find a report ["$1 Billion Additional Aid Will Reach Jordan Next Month", JO24 and archived here] that underscores in a concrete way how hugely important US support and generosity is to the kingdom. Somehow this is not reflected in the tone or content of what you are quoted as saying.
• While you are not to blame for this, we noticed what the JO24 report on your speech said about Ahlam Tamimi. It's sadly typical of the chronically inaccurate journalism emanating from other sources in your country. Tamimi, it wrongly states, is "accused of involvement in an attack that killed two US citizens in 2001". Accused? Really? She may be accused but why not mention that Tamimi herself proudly boasts that she did it. Worth knowing as well that she was convicted by a tribunal of three Israeli judges who sentenced her to sixteen terms of life imprisonment. JO24 says it was 16 years which isn't close to the truth (but could be a translation error). But in any event, she was out of prison as a result of the catastrophic Shalit Deal after just eight years. 
• And while it's true that she is charged by the US with killing just two US citizens - our daughter and the pregnant daughter, the only child, of our dear friends, the Haymans - the number of lives Tamimi extinguished, including the non-US citizens among them, is 16. One of those is a young mother, a US citizen, who has been lying unconscious in all the years since then.
• Thanks to very uncharacteristic and misplaced Hashemite tolerance, Tamimi had her own television program called Breezes of the Free or in Arabic “نسيم الأحرار” [background: "6-May-12: What lies behind freedom of the Palestinian Arab press?"], produced by Hamas and recorded unhindered, week after week, in the Jordanian capital between 2012 and 2016. From there it was beamed literally throughout the world, everywhere that Arabic speaking audiences were found. This turned Tamimi into a global celebrity. As you know.
• How does Jordan's willingness to allow Tamim's weekly incitement to terror, her gloating over the joys of blowing Jewish children to pieces, sit with your claim that the kingdom "respects and abides by the law"? Why is she permitted to appear as a celebrity in public events in Jordan? On Jordan's commercial television? Why was her rapturous welcome back to Jordan in October 2011 conducted in a government court-house? (Here's the proof.) Why isn't she in a Jordanian prison? Why isn't she on a flight to Washington now, in handcuffs and chains.
• And why, in the name of all that's good and decent, do you express no concern, no discomfort, no embarrassment, no nausea over the reality that Jordan has given Tamimi, who has never denied the murders in which she was involved, a dream life? Do you have children? Do you know anyone who does? Are you aware that Tamimi has boasted repeatedly that it was children she set out to kill with her bomb?

Thank you for clarifying matters.

You have delivered a good basis for the US media to engage with you. Your short speech will help them understand at a deeper level what your published comments mean in the context of US/Jordan relations and the billion dollars that's coming your way in December.

Naturally, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss what we have just placed in front of you. 

We would also want to take the opportunity to share with you some things you might not know about the beautiful life of the child whose unbearable loss we continue to mourn.

Sincerely,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem, Israel

UPDATE November 14, 2019: The reports of Ayman Safadi, foreign minister of Jordan, speaking clearly for the first time about how Jordan intends to deal with the kingdom's most famous terrorist (after more than two years of carefully maintained public silence) are now widely republished in the Arabic-speaking world. Some examples from the many we have seen this week:

• Report: Tension between Washington and Amman over Jordan's refusal to extradite Ahlam Al-Tamimi [Arabic], Russia Today, November 08, 2019
• Official... Jordan will not hand over Ahlam al-Tamimi [Arabic], Al-Madinah Al-Akhbariya (Jordan), November 11, 2019
• Safadi: There is no agreement between Jordan and the United States to hand over any wanted person and therefore we will not hand over Ahlam al-Tamimi [Arabic], Saraya News, Jordan's third-most visited website, November 11, 2019
• Jordan confirms its intention not to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi to America [Arabic], Alalam News Network, Iran, November 14, 2019
• Safadi: King made a decision to serve our national interests [Arabic], PETRA - Jordan's official government news agency, November 11, 2019. Significantly, the PETRA report concludes with this sentence: "Safadi reiterated Jordan's refusal to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi to the United States, adding that there is no agreement between the two countries to extradite wanted persons." (Archived version)

26-Jul-17: We listened carefully to Jordan's foreign minister and we have 10 questions

Online source

For reasons that regular readers will know, we watch events in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan with more than the usual amount of interest.

Here's an article, under the headline "Jordan sees Israeli reactions to embassy case ‘absurd’" that gets prominence in today's Jordan Times:

AMMAN — A senior official on Tuesday described as “absurd” the Israeli reactions after a diplomat who killed two Jordanians on Sunday arrived back in Israel. Israeli media on Tuesday showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu giving a hero’s  welcome to the unidentified embassy staffer who killed a 16-year-old boy and a surgeon.
“Absurd [are] some of the reactions that are coming of Israel which are trying to show this as if the ambassador and the suspect were under siege and were somehow liberated and celebrating them as heroes coming back home. This is really absurd. This is a criminal case and I think it is in everybody’s interest that it is pursued as such,” Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told CNN in an interview on Tuesday.
Instead, he said, justice should be allowed to take its course, and to respect the fact that two Jordanians were killed, he added.
Safadi said: “Jordan acted legally and morally [by complying to international laws on diplomatic mission]. It is upon Israel to do the same and allow for justice to take its course and to stop provocative behaviours that distort the facts here.
“We respected our obligations under international law because the suspect enjoys diplomatic immunity. We agreed with his statement, which we did and we agreed with the Israelis that he goes back. So Jordan did what it had to do under international law and now  it is incumbent upon Israel to also do what it has to do under the law, which is to allow for the criminal justice to take its course and also to act morally and allow for justice to happen.”
Safadi acknowledged that Jordan’s abidance by international law drew fire domestically, especially from MPs.
“The government is under pressure by deputies because it allowed the Israeli killer to leave,” he said, stressing that the decision had to be taken in this way out of Jordan’s commitments to international conventions.
["Jordan sees Israeli reactions to embassy case ‘absurd’", Jordan Times, July 26, 2017]

Interesting ideas, and some striking expressions that we highlighted. Now we have some questions for Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi.

Ahlam Tamimi, the murderer and mastermind of the Sbarro
massacre, quotes the one question that the human bomb asked
as they made their way to central Jerusalem target. Her answer is blood-chilling.

Does he, and do any of his advisers, consider that the statements bolded in the quoted piece ought to be taken seriously? Or are we to assume this article, along with its self-justifying expressions of utter devotion to treaties, justice, international practices and high standards of morality, is for domestic Jordanian consumption only?

These are deliberately pointed questions given what we know about the brazenly unlawful way the Jordan government has dealt with the case of a confessed murderer and FBI Most Wanted Terrorist by the name of Ahlam Tamimi.

Tamimi is a citizen of Jordan, born, raised and educated there. Nonetheless she calls herself a Palestinian. That's not the biggest of surprises. Between 70% and 80% of Jordanians do that.

Tamimi murdered our daughter Malki in 2001 along with fourteen other victims. She did it by masterminding the plot, carefully selecting the target and planting the bomb - who was a human being with an explosives-filled guitar case on his back.

Taking account of an additional victim who is still unconscious today, 16 years later, Tamimi is legally and morally responsible for sixteen lives destroyed - dozens of families broken, hundreds of people maimed and traumatized.

There are numerous on-line video clips and images of Tamimi laughing (literally) about the murders. She has never expressed a single word of regret about the Jerusalem massacre she masterminded. She admitted proudly and with a smile on her face to all the charges in court. Then she was released in the Shalit deal of 2011 when 1,027 terrorists were freed by Israel in exchange for Gilad Shalit.

Back in Jordan, Tamimi subsequently boasted repeatedly about the slaughter on triumphant visits to parts of the Arab world: Algeria (December 2011), Kuwait (July 2012 and March 2014), Lebanon (April 2012 and January 2015), Qatar (April 2012 and again in December 2013), Tunisia (April 2012 and November 2015) and Yemen (April 2014).

From her birthplace and home in Jordan, she has expressed delight about the people she murdered on dozens of occasions. She has done this in front of Jordanian high school and college students, Jordanian professional guilds and Jordanian women's assemblies.

She had her own globally-distributed made-in-Amman weekly television show for more than four years, in which the redemptive power of "resistance" crimes against Jews and Israelis were the core theme. (The show is still screened weekly but she stopped being its presenter in September 2016 when she was very briefly arrested in Jordan pursuant to an Interpol apprehension notice issued by the US Department of Justice. She was freed the following day, but evidently got advice that appearing weekly on her own terror-glorifying and murder-inciting TV show was temporarily not in her best interests or those of Jordan.)

From her Jordanian base, she has encouraged her audience to follow her example - to kill Jews, to murder Israeli children.

So to our questions to the foreign minister of Jordan:

1. Did Jordan sign a bilateral extradition treaty with the government of the United States on March 28, 1995 in Washington? (Hint: The full text of the treaty as signed and executed by the two governments is here, so presumably you're not going to answer "no".) And if Jordan thinks there is a constitutional law problem with the treaty, could it have fixed the problem? Could the parliament have ratified the treaty, if that's the flaw? Can it do that this afternoon?
2. Does "Jordan’s abidance by international law" (adopting the fractured phrasing that the Jordan Times article uses) mean Jordan (a) respects the treaty it signed with the US, and (b) accepts its validity and the fact that it is binding on both sides? Or the exact opposite?
3. Did Jordan extradite to the US a Jordanian terrorist called Eyad Ismoil who drove a bomb-laden truck into the parking garage of the World Trade Center in 1993? (The right answer is: "Yes, it most certainly did.") And is Ismoil now serving a 240 year sentence in a US Federal prison for his terrorist crimes with no chance of parole? Do you agree that this is allowing for justice to take its course? We do. Most people do.
4. Did the United States announce on Tuesday, March 14, 2017 via the Department of Justice in Washington that the Jordanian woman Ahlam Tamimi was added that day to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list? (Hint: It's recorded here on the DoJ website.) 
5. Did Jordan react publicly in any way to the news that a Federal criminal complaint against her, alleging the most serious of terrorist crimes, was being unsealed that day? (Hint: it's described here.) Are there any other Jordanians on that notorious list? (We checked. No, there are none except for Tamimi. Congratulations!) So did Jordan react publicly to the fact that a Jordanian was named? 
6. Did Jordan respect the fact that two Americans were killed (using a slightly changed form of your words, Minister) by a Jordanian who has repeatedly confessed to doing this? Taking this into account, did Jordan restrict her movements or her privileges in any way, then afterwards or now? Or can we assume Jordan is perfectly at ease with having an FBI Most Wanted Terrorist living freely in its capital city and speaking publicly whenever the mood takes her in Jordan's schools, Jordan's universities and Jordan's public places? How does any of this fit with what you have called Jordan's passion to act morally and allow for justice to happen?
7. Did Jordan do what it had to do under international law when the US asked it to extradite Tamimi under the provisions of the 22 year old treaty between the two countries? (Not that we are pressing for it, but did Jordan ever think about prosecuting Tamimi under Jordanian law? Can we examine that?) And related to what we just asked: Did Jordan ever object, at the time the extradition request was made or since then, in any way to the manner in which the United States made its extradition request?
8. Or did Jordan resort instead to absurd and insulting-to-the-intelligence claims like "Oops - we should have ratified it back then but we didn't"?  
9. With uncharacteristic efficiency, just six days after the US authorities announced they wanted her arrested and extradited, Jordan's Court of Cassation (see "Jordan rejects ‘most wanted’ woman’s extradition to US", Arab News, March 21, 2017) "rejected an appeal to extradite Ahlam Al-Tamimi... as her family urged Jordan’s government to ensure Al-Tamimi’s safety. The court upheld a ruling issued by an appeals court, the official Petra news agency reported. Petra, quoting a judicial source, said the extradition cannot go through because Jordan’s Parliament has never ratified an extradition agreement with the US signed in March 1995." On this sober-seeming and very-quickly-arranged legal decision, we ask: 
• An appeals court? An appeal against what? Did someone in the Jordanian legal system order Tamimi to be extradited and that decision had to be appealed? We don't think so. So who was the appellant? It's a simple question.
• The US/Jordan extradition treaty - which was already enforced two decades ago to send Ismoil to face Federal charges in the US and was clearly in effect then - wasn't ratified? So ratify it now, this afternoon! If not, why not!? 
• And what if there is no extradition treaty? You have extradited to countries where you have no treaty. You have demanded that Jordanians be extradited back to Jordan even though no extradition treaty is signed with the countries in question. But then there's this: Your supremely important strategic partner, the United States, is asking you to do it, no? What's holding you back? Is that what you call acting morally and allowing for justice to happen? Or is it the exact opposite?
10. Tamimi lives freely in Amman, Jordan. Many say she lives the life of a celebrity there and there's plenty of evidence that this is true. The murderous bombing she orchestrated and in which took the central role is a matter of public record. So are her multiple confessions. But shockingly Jordan harbors her, keeping her under royal protection according to some thank-you messages she herself has posted in Arabic on social media. So is there some conceivable way in which Jordan's treatment of this sadistic, vicious, deeply bigoted woman fits with Jordan’s commitments to international conventions? Is it compatible with your country respecting its obligations under international law? Or with acting morally?

We're not entirely naive. We assume these questions are going to be ignored as all our previous questions, comments and suggestions to the Jordanian ruling clique have been. We are perfectly aware of how easily voices like ours can be brushed aside.

But we hope to show the minister and his king that brushing aside the questions themselves is going to be less easy.