Posted on 09/21/2006 8:46:35 AM PDT by presidio9
A court on Thursday sentenced an Iraqi woman and six other people to death for their roles in the triple hotel bombings that killed 60 people in Jordan's capital last year.
The 35-year-old woman, Sajida al-Rishawi, is the only defendant in custody. She confessed on Jordanian television shortly after the blasts that she intended to carry out a suicide attack on one of the Western hotels.
Six others, including another Iraqi woman, were sentenced in absentia and remain at large. They are believed to be hiding in Iraq.
The late al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had claimed responsibility for the attacks. He also was tried as a fugitive, but the Jordanian military court dismissed his case after his death in a U.S. airstrike north of Baghdad in June.
The court said al-Rishawi and the other six were found guilty "beyond doubt."
Jordan's death penalty is by hanging, which is carried out after a protracted legal process that includes several options to appeal, including to the supreme court.
After the hearing, al-Rishawi's lawyer, Hussein al-Masri, said she was not surprised by her death sentence.
"She told me that she expected either to be sentenced to death, or to be sent back to Iraq," he said, adding that he planned to file an appeal soon.
During the 10-minute hearing, al-Rishawi sat on the floor of a small fenced-in dock, her head resting on her shoulder. Wearing a headscarf and a blue prison dress, she appeared emotionless as she watched the three-judge panel.
Two armed Jordanian policewomen stood outside the dock and asked al-Rishawi to rise when the chief judge read the sentence.
In a televised confession after her arrest, al-Rishawi said her explosives belt failed to detonate. She later retracted those statements, saying through her lawyer that she had no intention of killing herself and insisted that she did not even try to explode her belt.
She pleaded innocent to charges of conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack that led to the deaths of innocent people.
During the five-month trial, al-Rishawi's lawyer argued that her confession had been extracted under duress.
But an explosives expert testified that the trigger mechanism on al-Rishawi's belt had jammed.
Al-Masri had argued that his client's husband forced her to go with him to one of the Amman hotels. The husband, Ali al-Shamari, was one of the three Iraqi bombers who died in the blasts. Al-Rishawi told the court she married al-Shamari just days before the blasts, and that her marriage had not been consummated.
The blasts shook this relatively stable country in the volatile Middle East because of the high number of civilian casualties — mainly Jordanian Muslim women and children.
An average of 10 people — mostly men — are executed each year for crimes that include terrorism and premeditated murder. At least two women have been executed in recent years for first degree murder.
Iraqi woman Sajida al-Rishawi, shown here in this file photo from April 24, 2006, was sentenced to death along with six others for their roles in the November 2005 hotel bombings in Amman, Jordan. Al-Rishawi was the only defendant in custody for the sentencing in Jordan. The other six, including another Iraqi woman, remain at large. (AP Photo/Jordan Television, File)
Curiously, AP neglects to mention that Sajida al-Rishawi was a member of al Qaeda. Let's get that neck stretched already.
too ugly to live
YOU'RE GONNA DIE!
Oh,God...that's one of the funniest pictures I've ever seen!!!
Oh, I don't know about that. A little make up, six months at sea and a load of liquor, beautiful!
Amazing, they kill captured terrorists in Jordan, but let them go in Germany.
I throw that thing around a lot. It ownz.
Unfortunate resemblance.
She was going to take off all of her clothes instead, but she decided to be more compassionate and just bomb everyone.
A face that even her mother would slap.
AP needs to fess up and start reporting the war dead of the side they are "silently" cheering for.
Now I understand why the goats and pigs in muslim lands are so anxious.
I can see why she covers her face.
"Jordan's death penalty is by hanging, which is carried out after a protracted legal process that includes several options to appeal, including to the supreme court."
***
How "protracted" is the appeals process? Gawd, I hope it's not like Pennsylvania where we have criminals on "death row" for 20 or more years. *SIGH*
Alphabetized Hollyweird's first celebrity!
Looks like she gets the honor of being one of some nutjob's 27. Amazing that Ali al-Shamari had the willpower to wait until after the attack to consumate the marriage. You'd think he's be all over that.
Sometimes I think that's why they started covering their faces in the first place. Not a lot of beauty queens in that part of the world.
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