jordanians rally behind their king
Amman • King Abdullah returned here to an unexpectedly warm welcome Wednesday, as cheering crowds expressed support for the decisive execution of two terrorist prisoners in retaliation for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s grisly killing of a Jordanian pilot.
The latest ISIS atrocity was met with revulsion and outrage across the Arab world, with a leading Sunni imam calling for the extremists to suffer the same kind of harsh punishments they had meted out.
Would-be suicide bomber, Sajida al-Rishawi, and a former top lieutenant of al-Qaida in Iraq, Ziad alKarbouli, were executed at dawn, less than 12 hours after ISIS released a video that showed the Jordanian pilot, Lieut. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, being burned alive inside a cage.
Jordan has 100 more prisoners on death row, but only three are known to have been convicted of terrorism offences.
A spokesman for the Jordanian military, Col. Mamdouh al-Ameri, had earlier vowed “the revenge will be equal to what happened to Jordan.”
King Abdullah cut short his previously unannounced trip to Washington after a quick meeting with President Barack Obama, who expressed strong support for Jordan, one of six Arab nations that are part of the American-led coalition fighting ISIS, mostly through air raids.
Rishawi, in 2006, and Karbouli, in 2007, had been sentenced to death by Jordanian courts and had exhausted all appeals, but were not executed because of a long-term moratorium on the death penalty. That moratorium was lifted in December.
The king’s signature is required for death warrants, and the executions, which are normally carried out by hanging in Jordan, came while the king’s plane was still in the air from Washington.
King Abdullah landed in Jordan about midday, and he was greeted by thousands of people lining the road to the airport and nearby service roads, in an unusual outpouring of public support. Some were bused in from schools and universities, but many came on their own.
The mood was celebratory, with car horns blaring, flags waving, and displays of pictures of the king and the pilot, with slogans like, “We Are All Moaz.”
“We wanted to show the family that he is a martyr, and that is something to celebrate,” said one well-wisher, Walid Aladine, 22, a university student. Like many of the others, he was euphoric that the two convicted terrorists had been executed, and wanted to express his approval to the king.
“It gave us back some of our rights,” said his friend Hashim Abu Yahyeh, 27, also a student.
Both men said that before the hostage crisis, the beheading of two Japanese men and the killing of Lieutenant Kasasbeh, many Jordanians had been prepared to support the ISIS militants. “After what we’ve seen, no one will support them,” Mr. Aladine said.
Despite the swelling of support in Jordan, the U.S.led coalition suffered a blow after the United Arab Emirates pulled out of airstrikes. Emirati leaders were said to be angry at the lack of coalition air rescue facilities, which they said put their pilots at risk of the same fate as Lieut. Kasaesbeh.
They were also unhappy with how the coalition was being led, particularly in Iraq, where it is effectively providing air cover for ground operations that contain a strong presence of Iranian-backed militias and Iranian military advisers.
The UAE regards Iran with great suspicion, as a regional rival.
Its presence in the coalition is important to show ISIS fellow Sunni Arabs are among those fighting the group.
As outrage spread across the Arab world at the death of Lieut. Kasasbeh, the leader of Egypt’s premier institute of Islamic scholarship called for the extremists responsible to be killed, maimed or even crucified.
Denouncing ISIS as a “diabolical” terrorist group, the institute’s leader, Ahmed alTayeb, the grand imam of Al Azhar Mosque, cited Qur’anic verses to show Islam forbids killing without justification, as well as the burning or mutilation of enemies at war.
“This vile terrorist act requires punishment as cited by the Qur’an for oppressors and spoilers on earth who fight God and his Prophet, that they be killed, or crucified, or their hands and legs cut off,” he said in a statement.