State Security Court announces sentences for several terror suspects

AMMAN — The State Security Court (SSC) on Wednesday sentenced a man to 20 years in prison after convicting him of plotting subversive acts and for belonging to the Daesh extremist group.

The court first handed the 27-year-old defendant the death penalty for charges that also included manufacturing explosives and possessing illegal weapons, a senior judicial source said.

However, the SSC which included military and civil judges, decided to commute the sentence “because the defendant was young”, a senior judicial source told The Jordan Times.

The defendant’s two brothers were killed in a shootout with the authorities in June 2015 in Maan, which also left several police officers injured.

Court papers said the defendant and his two deceased brothers belonged to the Daesh terrorist group.

“The defendant used Daesh flags and placed them at their house, vehicle and other places in Maan Governorate,” the charge sheet said, adding that the defendant and his deceased brothers also “fired on several government buildings and on a police patrol in the governorate injuring several officers”.

“The defendant and the other gang members wanted to lure the police to their building where they had planted explosives,” the charge sheet read, noting that, after police forces started following them, the suspects fired at the personnel and detonated the premises, resulting in several injuries among the officers.

Wednesday’s verdict will automatically be reviewed by the Court of Cassation within the next 30 days.
Also on Wednesday, the SSC sentenced a man to two years with temporary hard labour for promoting the ideologies of Daesh through creating a Facebook page, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

According to the SSC verdict, the suspect published a photo of a child wearing a headband representing the Daesh emblem and shared a photo of a gun for sale with a caption notifying that he trades weapons. 

The court convicted the suspect of promoting the ideologies of a terrorist group and weapon dealing. 

In a different case, the SSC sentenced a suspect to 10 years with temporary hard labour for committing acts that threaten the security and safety of the society, and for spreading sedition, violating the public order and jeopardising the lives of people, Petra reported.

According to the charge sheet, the suspect used to work as a Gendarmerie Department officer and heard about a restricted group in Saudi Arabia, where he went to perform umra (lesser pilgrimage). He stayed with them for 20 days and started believing in their ideologies.

In a third SSC session, a court panel charged three suspects with 15-year imprisonment terms with hard labour and acquitted a fourth suspect in the same case, according to Petra.

In mid-2008, the suspects had decided to carry out a terrorist attack against an intelligence officer in Zarqa through targeting his car, as an act of revenge.

The suspects, who were not discovered at the time, set the car ablaze with gasoline and sponges. They reunited again later on as they decided to target the car of a man who was practising magic.

Security personnel spotted the suspects and arrested them after they stole the man’s car and pushed it off a mountain.