Ex-crown prince vows to defy efforts to silence him

The former crown prince of Jordan vowed to defy the orders of the government and his half brother, King Abdullah II, to stop communicating with the world even as he remained under what he described as house arrest in his home.

“I’m not going to obey when they say ‘you can’t go out, you can’t tweet, you can’t communicate with people,’ ” the former crown prince, Prince Hamzah, said in an audio message posted to Twitter on Monday by his supporters.

The government has accused Hamzah of destabilizing the “security and stability” of Jordan, a vital U.S. ally in the Middle East. The Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, suggested Sunday that the prince had been involved in a failed palace coup with foreign backing.

The feud and public airing of palace intrigue has been a blow to Jordan’s image as an island of stability in a volatile region.

Bordering Syria, Iraq, Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the country plays a pivotal role in regional security, and Jordan’s allies are watching developments anxiously.

Hamzah’s comments in the audio message posted Monday suggested that he was not going to be easily silenced.

The oldest son of King Hussein, who died in 1999, and his favorite wife, the U.S.-born Queen Noor, Hamzah, 41, is a graduate of the Harrow School in Britain and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.

He attended Harvard University and has served in the Jordanian armed forces.

Abdullah, who is 59 and also the product of elite U.S. and British schools, named Hamzah crown prince in 1999 but stripped him of the title in 2004 and transferred it to his son, Prince Hussein, now 26.