Jordan arrests Aqaba attack suspect
Jordan has arrested a Syrian accused of involvement in last week’s rocket attack on US warships in the Red Sea port of Aqaba.
The attack was allegedly carried out by an Iraq-based group, Jordan’s state television said.
Three of the attackers escaped over the border into Iraq on Friday – the day of the attack – using forged Iraqi passports, the television said on Monday, quoting a government spokesman.
The television did not name the Iraq-based group purported to have carried out the attack, in which the rockets missed the US warships but killed a Jordanian soldier.
Security sources have said the attack bore the hallmarks of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.
The government statement, read on state television, said the suspect, Muhammad Hasan Abd Allah al-Sihly, plotted and carried out the attack along with two of his sons and an Iraqi.
Al-Sihly, who lives in Amman, had been surveying sites for the attack in Aqaba since 6 August, the statement said. He was joined by his two sons – Abd Allah and Abd al-Rahman – and Muhammad Hamid Husain, the Iraqi, in “carrying out the heinous crime”.
Husain, also known as Abu Mukhtar, was the leader of the Iraq-based group, the announcement said.