Arab world condemns pilot’s death
Jordanians back executions of terrorist prisoners in wake of Islamic State atrocity
AMMAN, JORDAN— King Abdullah II returned to an unexpectedly warm welcome Wednesday, as cheering crowds expressed support for the country’s swift executions of two terrorist prisoners in retaliation for the Islamic State’s grisly killing of a Jordanian pilot.
The latest atrocity by the Islamic State 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.
The Jordanian state news agency Petra confirmed that two Iraqis already on death row here — a wouldbe suicide bomber, Sajida al-Rishawi, and a former top lieutenant of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Ziad al-Karbouli — were executed Wednesday at dawn, less than 12 hours after the Islamic State released a video that showed the Jordanian pilot, 1st Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh, 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 offenses.
A spokesman for the Jordanian military, Col. Mamdouh al-Ameri, had earlier vowed that “the revenge will be equal to what happened to Jordan.”
Al-Rishawi was sent to participate in the suicide bombings in 2005 of three Amman hotels that killed at least 57 people, but her vest did not explode; al-Karbouli was considered one of the planners of that attack. Their organization later became the Islamic State.
The king cut short his previously unannounced trip to Washington after a quick meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, who expressed strong support for Jordan, one of six Arab nations that are part of the U.S.- led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, mostly through air raids.
Al-Rishawi, in 2006, and al-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 in Jordan. 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.