Jordan foils ISIL terrorist plots and arrests 17 cell members

Jordan’s intelligence services said they foiled an ISIL plot in November that included plans to attack security and military institutions, commercial centres, media stations and moderate religious figures.

“The cell planned to execute the attacks simultaneously in order to undermine the national security and spread chaos and fear among citizens,” the intelligence services said.

It arrested 17 members of the cell, confiscated their weapons and the material they planned to use for their operations.

Interrogations showed that the cells had carefully watched their targets. They planned armed robberies on banks in Zarqa and car thefts to finance their operations.

The intelligence service said

the cell had planned to make explosives by using raw materials available in the local market.

All members of the cell were interrogated, referred to the public prosecutor and charged with the conspiracy to carry out terror attacks, promoting extremist ideology and selling weapons and ammunition to carry out terrorist attacks.

The Soufan Centre says Jordan had the second largest number of citizens, after Saudi Arabia, to have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside ISIL. Three thousand Jordanians have joined the extremists.

Jordan has experienced several terrorist attacks and plots inside the country.

Last month ISIL claimed an attack in Karak in the south of the country in which 10 people were killed and 34 injured.

Three Jordanian intelligence officers and two other security personnel were killed in an attack on their office on the outskirts of the Baqaa Palestinian refugee camp, near Amman in June 2016.

That year Jordan foiled a major terror plot in Irbid in the north of the country near the border with Syria, in a raid against suspected ISIL militants who had been plotting larger attacks. Seven of the militants were killed.