Al-Zarqawi gets third death sentence
Jordan’s state security court has handed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, his third death sentence in absentia for planning a failed attack at the border post with Iraq.
A three-man military court also on Sunday handed Saudi-born Fahed Fuheiqi, 24, who is now in police custody, a death sentence by hanging, while Jordanian Darar Abu Oudeh, who is a fugitive, was given a death sentence in absentia.
Fuheiqi, who entered Iraq from Syria in August 2004, was arrested in December 2004 after his four-wheel-drive car laden with explosives was stopped from driving into several Jordanian petrol tankers carrying fuel to US troops in the border area.
The three, including al-Zarqawi, who was accused of masterminding the failed bombing, were found guilty of “conspiring to undertake terror attacks”, a charge that carries a death sentence.
Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian whose real name is Ahmed Fadhil al-Khalayleh, has previously been sentenced to death by the state security court for the October 2002 murder of a US diplomat in Amman.
Released from jail in 1999 as part of a general royal pardon by the Jordanian monarch, al-Zarqawi claimed the triple bomb attacks on luxury Amman hotels on 9 November that killed 60 people.