Man handed five-year sentence for promoting terrorist ideology

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation has upheld a July State Security Court (SSC) ruling sentencing a man to five years in prison after convicting him of promoting terrorist ideology in 2017.

The defendant was convicted by the SSC of promoting Daesh ideology by downloading news about the terror group from his mobile phone and sending the material to his relative. He was arrested in mid-2017.

Court documents said that the defendant had befriended two other men who adopted Daesh ideology in 2017 after monitoring the group’s activities on social media. These two men did not appeal their verdicts.

The three men were convinced that "Daesh applied the proper Sharia [Islamic law] and that the group was defending Muslims in Syria and Iraq”, court papers said.

“The defendants also wanted to avenge the deaths of two men affiliated to terrorist groups, who were killed by Jordanian security forces," court documents said.

The three men decided to "spread the Daesh terror group's ideology through audio and video clips on social media”, according to court documents.

The SSC general prosecutor asked the higher court to uphold the sentence, stating that the SSC had followed the proper procedures when sentencing the defendant, who had appealed his verdict.

The defendant, however, contested the ruling through his lawyers, claiming that he “had never used social media to promote Daesh ideology and that the SSC failed to provide any evidence to prove this fact”.

The lawyer also claimed that the sentence was "very harsh" and that his client is "poor, has no criminal record and is young and deserves a second chance in life”.

However, the higher court ruled that the SSC had followed the proper procedures and that the defendant deserved the verdict he had received.

“It was clear that the defendant confessed willingly to his actions and there was no evidence indicating that he did not do so,” the higher court ruled.

The Cassation Court tribunal comprised judges Mohammad Ibrahim, Yassin Abdullat, Bassem Mubeidin, Naji Zu’bi and Hammad Ghzawi.