Jordan said it had executed 2 prisoners early Wednesday after a new
video surfaced on the Internet Tuesday showing ISIS burning alive a
Jordanian pilot the terror group had held since December.
Government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani said that prisoners Sajida
al-Rishawi and Ziad al-Karbouli were executed. Al-Rishawi has been on
death row for her role in a triple hotel bombing in the Jordanian
capital Amman in 2005 that killed dozens. Over the past week, Jordan had
twice offered to swap her for the pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh.
However, officials have said his captors did not deliver proof he was
still alive, and the swap never moved forward.
The 44-year-old Iraqi woman's suicide belt did not detonate at the
time of the Amman attack and she fled the scene, but was quickly
arrested. After a televised confession, she recanted, but her appeal was
turned down.
Al-Rishawi had family ties to the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda, a
precursor of ISIS. Ziad Al-Karbuli was a former aide to Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian Al Qaeda operative who was killed in 2006.
The 22-minute video, which Jordan said is authentic, brought a grisly
end to speculation into the fate of Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, 26, who was
captured when his plane crashed during a bombing mission in Syria Dec.
24. The video, which reports said could have been made more than a month
ago, shows the pilot standing in a cage with a line of fuel leading to
him, which is then ignited, causing him to burst into flames. Islamic
State had previously sought to trade Al-Kaseasbeh for Sajida al-Rishawi,
an Iraqi woman who is in a Jordanian prison for her role in a 2005
suicide bomb attack that killed 60 people in Amman.
No comments:
Post a Comment