Jordan arrests four MPs for visiting home of Zarqawi
AMMAN, June 11: Jordanian authorities arrested four Islamist members of parliament who attended the wake of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, including one who publicly described the notorious terrorist as a “martyr,” government spokesman Nasser Judeh told The Associated Press.
Mohammed Abu Fares, Jaafar al-Hourani, Ali Abu Sukkar and Ibrahim al-Mashwakhi were being questioned for “statements and actions pertaining to the terrorist al-Zarqawi, which provoked public sentiment,” Judeh said.
“They violated the law because they instigated sectarianism and incited conflict,” he said, referring to remarks by Abu Fares, who lauded al-Zarqawi and said his battle against “American occupiers” in Iraq was justified.
Judeh said some of the relatives of the victims of last November’s triple Amman hotel bombings also lodged complaints with the government against the four lawmakers — all of them members of the influential Islamic Action Front.
On Friday, Abu Fares and the three other deputies went to Zarqawi’s home to pay their condolences. At a sermon he delivered following the wake, Abu Fares called al-Zarqawi a “martyr.”
He said later that the term did not apply to Jordanians who died in the hotel blasts, claimed by Zarqawi’s group. “I can’t describe them as martyrs; these were mobs and ignorant (people),” Abu Fares told Al Arabiya satellite station on Saturday.
The remarks and the visit to Zarqawi’s home in Zarqa, 22 kilometers east of Amman, riled Jordanian public opinion. Many in the kingdom detest the Jordanian-born Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq for claiming responsibility for the hotel bombings that killed 60 civilians, including women and children attending a Jordanian-Palestinian Muslim wedding.
Newspaper columnists and editorials continued their scathing attacks on Sunday against the Islamic Action Front, Jordan’s largest opposition group.
Jordanian parliament said that Abu Fares’ comments marked a “serious precedent” in sanctioning killing, glorifying murderers and insulting Zarqawi’s Jordanian victims.
The parliament, which is in recess for the summer, did not say if it will take action against the four lawmakers, who belong to the 17-member bloc representing the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement.
Lawmaker Mamdouh Abbadi, a pro-government politician, said deputies may consider unspecified measures to “reprimand” the four Islamist lawmakers. He declined to elaborate.
Party leader Hamza Mansour, who is also a deputy, rebuffed parliament’s call. “The Islamic Action Front makes its own decisions according to its convictions and doesn’t accept requests coming from here and there,” he told the AP.
