Lawyers refuse to defend failed Iraqi woman suicide bomber
The Jordanian Bar Association today declined to provide a volunteer lawyer to defend an Iraqi woman tried for her role in a suicide bombing against three Jordanian hotels.
Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, 35, who failed to set off her suicide bomb vest, was charged in a military court with trying to carry out a terrorist attack. Sixty people died when three other suicide bombers, including her husband, set off explosives in the Amman hotels on November 9 last year.
Jordan’s bar association said it would not provide her with a defence lawyer because it is the “prerogative of the court, not the association, to find a lawyer to defend the accused”, said association President Saleh Armouti in a letter to the head of the military State Security Court.
Armouti rebuked interrogation procedures followed by the military prosecutor, saying al-Rishawi should have been given access to a lawyer during questioning. “That’s one of the pillars of interrogation,” and failing to have done so “violated the rights of the defendant,” said the lawyer, who also sits on Saddam Hussein’s defence team.
He declined to further elaborate, but the bar’s decision may have been influenced by the widespread Jordanian outrage over the blasts – the deadliest in Jordan’s recent history.
In previous such trials before a military court, the Jordanian bar association had accepted to name volunteer lawyers to defend terror suspects.
Al-Rishawi had appealed for legal assistance at her trial’s opening on April 24. “I don’t have a lawyer. I have God to defend me. I have no money now to secure a lawyer,” she told the judges in a strong Iraqi accent.
A court official said a response would be made at a hearing scheduled for Monday.
The court was expected to continue looking for a defence lawyer, possibly without going through the lawyers’ association.
Al-Rishawi was arrested after fleeing one of the blast scenes when explosives belt failed to detonate. She later made a televised confession.
She is the only one of eight defendants present for the trial. The chief suspect, tried in absentia, is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in Iraq and the alleged mastermind of the hotel attack. His group claimed responsibility.
The bombings sparked widespread protests against al-Zarqawi among Jordanians, even those who had been sympathetic to insurgents battling the US military presence in Iraq.
Al-Zarqawi’s group has vowed more strikes in Jordan, a US ally that signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and has been the target of several al Qaida terror plots because of its moderate stance and vocal criticism of extremist Islamic groups.
The State Security Court has already sentenced al-Zarqawi to death in absentia three times for involvement in terror plots against Jordan. One of the attacks was the assassination of aid official Laurence Foley, who was gunned down outside his Amman home in October 2002.
