AMMAN - The Court of Cassation has reduced the prison terms of three men accused of plotting terror attacks in the Kingdom on behalf of Hamas, their lawyer said on Thursday.
"I was informed today that the Cassation Court decided to commute the sentences passed against my clients by half because they are young and deserve a second chance, in addition to the fact that they have special family conditions," lawyer Musa Abdullat said.
On June 12, 2008, the State Security Court (SSC) sentenced Ayman Naji Hamadallah, 35, to 15 years in prison after declaring him guilty of plotting to carry out terror attacks and possessing explosives and weapons.
Defendants Ahmad Abu Rabieh, 28, and Ahmad Abu Diab, 30, were each sentenced to five years on charges of conspiracy to carry out terror attacks.
"Hamadallah's sentence was reduced to seven-and-a-half years in prison while Diab and Rabieh had their sentences reduced to 30 months and are expected to be released today [Thursday] from prison because they have already completed their sentences," Abdullat told The Jordan Times.
The Cassation Court's verdict on Thursday is final and will not be returned to the SSC, according to Abdullat, who praised the ruling.
"Today's verdict is very important because the Cassation Court decided it was a court of merit, or trial court and decided to issue a final verdict in the case without returning it to the SSC," Abdullat said.
The three defendants, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, appeared on Jordan Television in May 2006 and confessed to plotting to kill senior officials in the intelligence service and to launch rocket attacks on the Israeli embassy and the Israeli ambassador's residence in Amman, the court documents said.
The defendants received money and military training after meeting with other agents in Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the town of Tobas in Palestine and Sharjah.
The suspects were arrested in 2006 as part of a sweep that netted 20 people and marked a high point in tensions between Jordan and Hamas.
In January 2007, an explosives expert told the military tribunal he examined four RBJ18 and N72A2 rockets, 20 explosive shells, around 22 kilos of TNT and 20 detonators that belonged to the defendants and found them "extremely dangerous to humans, tanks and property".
A month later, the defendants retracted their confessions and denied any links to Hamas, claiming instead that they were forced under torture and duress to admit on TV to plotting attacks and belonging to Hamas, and that their confessions in front of investigators had been "fabricated".
They told the tribunal they did not plot to attack anyone and had no intentions of launching attacks in Jordan.
Hamas leaders were expelled from Jordan in November 1999, beginning a long period of strained relations between the Kingdom and the Islamist organisation. Dialogue resumed in August last year.
By Rana Husseini
© Jordan Times 2009
