Suicide bomb accused woman is lying, says witness
A prosecution witness in a trial in Amman, Jordan, today said an Iraqi woman lied when she said she did not plan to blow herself up in Amman’s triple hotel blasts.
Brig Abdul-Rahim Arabiyat, who retired from Jordanian intelligence after the November attack that killed 63 people, said the defendant told him she pulled the trigger on her explosives belt, but it failed to explode.
Shortly after the attack, Sajida al-Rishawi (aged 35) confessed on Jordanian television that she intended to carry out a suicide attack on one of the hotels along with her husband and two other Iraqi bombers.
At the time she said the trigger on her explosives belt did not detonate.
She retracted her confession last month, telling her lawyer she had no intention of carrying out her suicide mission and insisting she did not even try to pull the trigger on her explosives belt.
Arabiyat told the country’s military court that al-Rishawi told him before she was arrested November 12 that “she was part of the suicide group that detonated explosives at three Amman hotels.”
“She said she was at one of the hotels and that she pulled the trigger on her explosives belt, but it did not detonate,” Arabiyat said.
The former top security official said al-Rishawi also told him that when her explosives charge did not go off, the bomber she was with “kicked her out” of the hotel ballroom, where a Jordanian-Palestinian wedding was taking place.
Al-Rishawi’s lawyer, Hussein al-Masri, has said in an interview that his client was forced by her husband to go to one of the Amman hotels. “But she did not want to kill herself, or harm anyone,” added al-Masri.
Al-Rishawi, who faces the death penalty, entered an innocent plea at the start of her trial last month.
Her lawyer argued that her guilty confession was extracted forcefully, and asked that his client undergo a psychological evaluation. The court denied the request.
Al-Rishawi is the only defendant in custody. Seven others are being tried in absentia, including the Jordanian-born leader of al Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The hearing was adjourned.
