Jordan: Court Sentences Two MPs To Prison for Offering Condolences

The Jordanian State Security Court Sunday August 6, 2006,  issued its ruling in the case of the three MB Members of Parliament who offered condolences to Zarqawi’s family, sentencing one of them for two years, another member for one and half years along with  financial penalties for each, and cleared the third defendant. The highly politicized case was seen by observes as bad omen which presages an internal political crisis in Jordan.
Islamic Action Front Head Zaki Bin Rashid said in an exclusive statement to Ikhwanweb that this ruling comes within the context of a continued campaign of punitive measures used as a leverage for pressuring the Islamic movement, adding that these attempts on the part of the government are aimed to hinder the Islamic movement’s political reform program, saying that such attempts will be down the drain and the movement will not give up its reform efforts whatever the sacrifices might be. Bin Rashid lamented that this act shows a political narrow mindedness on the part of Jordanian government which was supposed to deal with such matters in a different way, especially with the events witnessed by the Arab region, mainly the Israeli aggression on Lebanon and Palestine and the continued US new Middle East scheme of which Jordan is part and parcel. On the reaction of the Islamic movement to this step, Bin Rashid reaffirmed that all available, peaceful ways and means are under way, adding that the movement may consider a mass resignation of the its members from the Parliament or any step deemed by the movement as effective in retaliation of these court rulings.
The Court based its rulings on what the Attorney General said that condolence offered by the three MB members to Zarqawi’s family is seen as a threat to the national unity and giving way for sectarian and racial conflict within society.

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Jordan sentences two MPs to jail over Zarqawi condolences
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