Jordan breakthrough as would-be woman bomber held
Police have arrested an Iraqi woman would-be suicide bomber who failed to detonate her explosives inside one of Amman’s three bombed hotels, Jordanese officials announced today in a dramatic breakthrough in the case.
The hotels were attacked by three al-Qaida cell suicide bombers who included her husband.
The woman, identified as the sister of Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s former right hand man in Iraq’s volatile Anbar province, was to make a televised confession on Jordan’s state-run television later in the day, officials said.
Jordan’s deputy premier Marwan Muasher said the four Iraqis drove into Jordan from Iraq on November 4, just five days before the attacks, and rented an apartment in western Amman. They took taxis to the attack sites last Wednesday.
The involvement of al-Zarqawi in the triple hotel bombings is a worrying development for the region, indicating that the feared terrorist or his leaders have deadly designs and abilities beyond war-ravaged Iraq’s borders.
The would-be woman bomber was identified as Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, 35. She is the sister of the slain former militant Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, the former right-hand man of al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaida in Iraq.
Muasher said the brother was killed by US forces in the one-time terrorist stronghold of Falluah, west of Baghdad, but it was unclear when.
It also was unclear where police arrested the woman, or when.
Al-Qaida in Iraq had already claimed responsibility for the bombings, which it said it launched to strike at Jordan’s support for the US and other Western powers, and because it accused Jordan of defiling Islam.
But al-Qaida, in its Internet claims of responsibility, had said that all four bombers succeeded, so the news of the arrest of one would-be bomber – the woman - came as a surprise.
King Abdullah, who also said today that three Iraqi men and one woman carried out the attacks, has pledged to target anyone supporting or sympathising with such terrorists.
Muasher said the three suicide bombers who attacked the Grand Hyatt, Radisson SAS and Days Inn hotels Wednesday – killing 57 others – were all Iraqis.
They were identified as al-Rishawi’s husband, Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari, 35, from Anbar; Rawad Jassem Mohammed Abed, 23; and Safaa Mohammed Ali, 23.
The four left their apartment on Wednesday – the day of the attacks – and took taxis to the hotels, including the Radisson, where almost 300 people were attending a Jordanian-Palestinian wedding reception in one of the hotel’s ballrooms.
“It is clear from the way she was dressed and the explosive belts with ball bearings that they wanted to target innocent civilians, and also wanted to inflict the biggest number of casualties and victims,” Muasher said.
Al-Rishawi entered the hotel’s reception with her husband. When the husband noticed his wife was having trouble detonating her bomb by pulling its primer cord, he “pushed her out of the ballroom. Once she was out, he blew himself up,” Muasher said.
The bomb strapped to the man’s body was packed with the powerful explosive RDX and ball bearings and was designed to kill as many people as possible, Muasher said.
Investigations showed that no Jordanians were involved in the actual attacks, but several Jordanian followers of al-Zarqawi have been arrested, the deputy premier added.
Al Qaida in Iraq’s operation in Jordan – its deadliest inside a neighbouring Mideast country – raised fears that al-Zarqawi’s terror campaign has gained enough momentum to spread throughout the region.
Earlier today, Iraq’s defence minister offered Jordan its support in the hotel bombings probe and warned that unchecked violence in Iraq will spread terrorism across the region.
“We are partners in facing terrorism,” Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press. “Amman’s ordeal and Jordan’s ordeal is the ordeal of all Iraqis.”
The terrorists’ “target is to kill tolerance and destroy coexistence in Arab and Muslim cities,” al-Dulaimi said.
Al-Dulaimi also criticised Syria for letting Islamic extremists train on its soil and enter Iraq to carry out terrorist attacks.
“Let me tell the Syrians that if the Iraqi volcano explodes no neighbouring capital will be saved,” the Iraqi official said. “We have a 620 kilometre (385 mile) border with this country and we have 620 problems with the Syrians.”
The US and Iraq have repeatedly called on Syria to shut its borders and stop al Qaida in Iraq extremists allied to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi entering Iraq.
Syria has also been implicated by United Nations in the February 14 assassination of ex-Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri.
“It seems our brothers in Syria won’t like what we say in this period, which is a critical one for the Syrians,” al-Dulaimi said.
Wednesday’s Amman hotel attacks sparked the largest Jordanian manhunt in living history and angered most of this desert kingdom’s 5.4 million people and many of the 400,000 Iraqis living here.
