VZCZCXYZ0001 
PP RUEHWEB 

DE RUEHAM #3360/01 3580421 
ZNR UUUUU ZZH 
P 230421Z DEC 08 
FM AMEMBASSY AMMAN 
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 4006 
INFO RUEILB/NCTC WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY

UNCLAS AMMAN 003360 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR S/CT:RSHORE AND NEA/ELA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PTER ASEC JO
SUBJECT: JORDAN: 2008 COUNTRY REPORTS ON TERRORISM 
 
REF: STATE 120019 
 
¶1. (U) In its public statements and security measures, the 
Government of Jordan continued to place a high priority on 
its fight against violent extremism in 2008. This occurred 
against a backdrop of low support among Jordanians for 
terrorism. The Pew Research Center Global Attitudes survey 
of 2008 indicated that only 19 percent of Jordanian Muslims 
expressed confidence in Usama Bin Laden and only 25 percent 
believed suicide bombing was ever justified - roughly the 
same as last year, but reflecting a multi-year downward trend. 
 
¶2. (U) According to the same survey, however, Jordan was the 
only Muslim country in which most respondents had favorable 
opinions of Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist 
organization. The demographic realities attendant to hosting 
a majority Palestinian population - coupled with intensifying 
concern in Jordan about the stalled peace process and 
instability in the Palestinian areas were among the factors 
behind a government decision to resume dialogue with Hamas. 
News of the meetings first surfaced in July. Jordan in 
recent years had maintained one of the more antagonistic 
policies toward Hamas among Arab states. 
 
¶3. (U) The government offered little public comment on its 
motivations and plans for the General Intelligence 
Department's (GID) engagement with Hamas - saying talks were 
narrowly focused on security issues - but local and Arab 
media outlets portrayed a more holistic improvement of ties, 
citing the release in October of two Hamas members accused of 
photographing sensitive Jordanian sites as a direct result 
and also raising the possibility of an eventual high-level 
visit by Damascus-based Hamas political bureau chief Khalid 
Mish'al. According to an August poll by the Jordan Center 
for Strategic Studies - conducted after the first public 
reports of the Hamas-Jordan meetings - the percentage of 
Jordanian respondents who said they viewed Hamas as a 
"legitimate resistance organization" increased from 59 to 71 
percent since June; the pollster attributed the rise in 
Hamas' popularity in part to the Hamas-Government of Jordan 
warming trend. 
 
¶4. (U) Even as the Jordan-Hamas relationship thawed 
somewhat, however, the government continued to express its 
strong support for the Palestinian Authority, led by Fatah's 
Mahmoud Abbas, and for the peace process. Noteworthy in this 
regard was Jordan's ongoing training of over a thousand 
Palestinian security forces at the Jordan International 
Police Training Center (JIPTC) outside of Amman. Throughout 
2008, graduates were deployed in the West Bank cities of 
Jenin and Hebron. These forces contributed significantly to 
the security of these areas and helped advance peace and 
stability in the West Bank. 
 
¶5. (U) More broadly, Jordan continued to reinforce the need 
for moderate authentic Islam worldwide through the 
propagation of the Amman Message of 2004 and by using the 
Royal Court-based "Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute of Islamic 
Thought" to coordinate global efforts to promote moderate 
Islam and interfaith relations. King Abdullah II in 2008 used 
his position to promulgate this view. 
 
¶6. (U) In a mid-November statement on the third anniversary 
of the 2005 Amman hotel bombings that killed dozens of 
Jordanians, King Abdullah reiterated the need to fight 
terrorism and takfirism (when Muslims assert that other 
Muslims are not true followers of Islam, and in some cases 
deserving of death), and to deliver an Islamic message based 
on moderation and rejection of extremism. Also in November, 
Jordan hosted a conference entitled "Toward an Islamic 
Renaissance Plan." Participants called on the Arab media to 
"open the media, cultural, and political doors for the trends 
of centrism and moderation... to enable this trend to reach 
the large masses, which are grabbed by the trends of 
religious and non-religious extremism and fanaticism." 
 
¶7. (U) Putting such directives into practice, Jordan's 
Public Security Directorate (PSD) in November 2008 
inaugurated a program to expose takfiri prisoners to a select 
group of jurists and professors of Islamic law and help 
convince them through dialogue to revise their extremist 
thinking and limit the danger that those prisoners would 
impart their thought on other inmates. More generally, 
Jordan's various security services sought to identify 
potential radicals before they become violent and to turn 
them toward a more moderate path early on. 
 
¶8. (U) Jordan's security forces remained vigilant against 
terror threats and the State Security Court (SSC) - a special 
tribunal for terrorism and other cases that has both civilian 
and military judges and attorneys - maintained a heavy 
caseload, bringing many to trial and convicting others. Some 
examples: 
 
- In August, the SSC sentenced 15 men to prison for plotting 
to recruit people to fight Americans in Iraq, also convicting 
the defendants of plotting actions that would have undermined 
Jordan's relations with another country and subjected the 
Kingdom to hostile acts. 
 
- In June, the Court sentenced three men after they were 
convicted on charges of storing weapons in Jordan for Hamas. 
The court sentenced Ayman Naji Hamadallah to 15 years in jail 
with hard labor and handed down five-year jail terms against 
Muhammad Ahmad Abu-Rabi and Ahmad Abu-Dhyab. The defendants 
were convicted on the charge of "conspiring to commit acts of 
terrorism." 
 
- Also in June, the SSC sentenced an Al-Qa'ida network 
affiliate - Awni Mansi - to life imprisonment with hard labor 
on charges of possessing automatic weapons with illicit 
intent and attempted murder during a shoot-out with police in 
Irbid in January 2007. According to the indictment, Mansi 
had been assigned by an Al-Qa'ida member in Syria to recruit 
Jordanian men to be trained in Syria and Lebanon before being 
sent to Iraq to join Al-Qa'ida members. 
 
- In May, the SSC sentenced Sattam Zawahra, 29, Nidal Momani, 
30, and Tharwat Daraz, 25, to 15-year prison terms after 
convicting them of plotting to assassinate President George 
¶W. Bush during his visit to Jordan in November 2006. The 
tribunal first handed the defendants the death penalty but 
immediately commuted the sentence to 15 years because they 
were "still young and deserve a second chance in life." 
 
¶9. (U) It should also be noted that in May, Jordan's Supreme 
Court overturned the 10-year sentence of Muammar Ahmad Yusuf 
Al-Jaghbir, who had been convicted for his role in the 2002 
murder of USAID official Laurence Foley in Amman. The Court 
referred the case back to the SSC. 
 
¶10. (U) While the security forces and the SSC responded 
effectively to terrorism, some legislative tools proved 
impotent. For instance, UN Conventions that were signed by 
the government and believed to be recognized by the UN 
Assembly (for example, the UN Convention Against Hostage 
Taking, Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, Suppression of 
Acts of Nuclear Terrorism) are not recognized by the Ministry 
of Justice as able to withstand judicial scrutiny because 
they were never enacted by Parliament and/or published in the 
Gazette. Therefore, they are not recognized as legitimate 
and are unenforceable. 
 
¶11. (U) The Jordan Securities Commission Board of 
Commissioners issued anti-money laundering (AML) regulations 
for securities activities in June, a positive step toward 
defining obligated entities falling under the regulatory 
purview of the Commission; establishing requirements for 
creating effective internal anti-money laundering (AML); 
establishing record keeping requirements; and requiring 
specific due diligence procedures for dealing with high risk 
customers including politically exposed persons. The lack of 
comprehensive legislation addressing terrorist financing, 
however, remains a gap in Jordanian efforts to impede money 
laundering and terrorist financing (CFT). During 2008, over 
400 Jordanians - in banks, the insurance commission, Jordan 
Customs, the PSD, the GID, as well as judges and prosecutors 
- received training on the full range of AML/CTF issues. 
 
¶12. (U) In mid-December, the United States and Jordan signed 
an agreement to work cooperatively to detect, deter, and 
interdict illicit smuggling of nuclear material - deepening 
the Jordanian-U.S. partnership in the global effort to 
prevent nuclear terrorism and proliferation. The agreement 
will help Jordan expand its detection systems at various 
ports of entry and lead to training of Jordanian officials on 
the use and maintenance of the equipment. 
 
Visit Amman's Classified Web Site at 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/amman 
 
 
Beecroft