Security court attorney general appeals Abu Qatada not guilty verdict

AMMAN — The State Security Court (SSC) attorney general’s office on Tuesday appealed the SSC’s acquittal of hard-line cleric Mahmoud Othman in September of terrorism charges at the Cassation Court.

The SSC had found Othman, known as Abu Qatada, not guilty of plotting to carry out attacks against Westerners in Amman, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.  

The attorney general demanded that the Cassation Court overturn the verdict and convict Abu Qatada, according to Petra. 

At the beginning of September, the SSC prosecutor had also filed a petition, contesting the court’s not-guilty ruling issued in June in the first case that was filed against Abu Qatada known as “reform and challenge”. 

In the “reform and challenge” case, the 51-year-old cleric was charged with masterminding Al Qaeda-inspired attacks on a host of sites across the capital in the late 1990s, while in the “Millennium bombing” plot, he and other hard-line Islamists were charged with attempting to bomb the American School in west Amman.

The SSC declared Abu Qatada not guilty in the two cases, but now the final verdict will be issued by the Cassation Court.