Jordan sentences two to hang for IS tourist site attack

Two men convicted of involvement in the killing of tourists and Jordanians in 2016 have seen their life sentences turned to death sentences.

MENA

2 min read

The New Arab & agencies

10 February, 2019

The two brothers were given death sentences [AFP]

Two Jordanian brothers involved in an Islamic State group-inspired shooting in the south of the kingdom were sentenced to death on Sunday, after their life sentences were overturned by an Amman court.

They were found guilty last year of their involvement in the 2016 attack at a tourist site in Karak, which left seven policemen, two Jordanian civilians, and a female Canadian tourist dead. A further 34 people were wounded in the attack claimed by IS.

Jordan's state security court, a military tribunal, overruled their previous life sentences and ordered Khalid al-Majali and Hamza al-Majali to be "hanged to death".

"The actions of the defendants caused chaos, panic and horror among Jordanians and foreign tourists and threatened the country's security and stability," a judicial source told AFP.

Three were sentenced to 15 years in prison for their role in the Karak shootings and five others to serve three years in jail.

The attack on the Crusader castle in the deeply-conservative south of Jordan sparked fears of further IS attacks, where the jihadis had established a self-declared "caliphate" in neighbouring Syria and Iraq.

Hundreds of Jordanians had joined IS in Syria, while a Jordanian pilot was cruelly murdered by the jihadis a year earlier, with fears the killing could spark unrest in kingdom.

This was one of a number of attacks on civilian and military forces by IS in Jordan, although the country's security services managed to control the situation.

"I think Jordanians have accepted death penalty verdicts for people involved in terrorist acts, especially after the buring alive by IS of a Jordanian pilot in a cage," Jordanian journalist Tareq al-Naimat, from al-Araby al-Jadeed, told The New Arab.