Cassation Court upholds five-year sentence for man spreading Daesh ideology

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation has upheld a March 2022 State Security Court (SSC) ruling sentencing a man to five years in prison for spreading terrorist ideology through social media in Jordan in 2021.

The defendant was convicted of promoting Daesh ideology to gain more sympathisers through social media and was handed the maximum punishment.

Court documents said the defendant had been following the Daesh (ISIS) group since 2013 and adopted “their takfiri ideology”.

“The defendant was convinced that Daesh applied the proper Sharia and he decided to spread its ideology by creating a Facebook page under the name of Abu Abdallah in early 2020,” court papers said.

The defendant used “his page to publish videos of terrorist activities that were conducted by Daesh group and tried to convince his page followers that the terror group was doing the right thing,” according to court documents.

The defendant was arrested in May 2021, the court maintained.

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

The defendant contested the SSC ruling through his lawyer, claiming that “the SCC did not submit any evidence that he used social media to spread Daesh ideology”.

The lawyer also charged that the SSC prosecutor “failed to present any other solid evidence that would implicate his client with the charges”.

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

“It was clear that the defendant confessed willingly to the charges and the investigation procedure was correct and within the law,” the Court of Cassation said.

The Court of Cassation judges were Mohammad Ibrahim, Qassem Dughmi, Nayef Samarat, Hammad Ghzawi and Mohammad Khashashneh.