Jordanian Militants Shown Confessing on State TV
By Suleiman al-Khalidi
AMMAN, Jordan (Reuters) - Jordanian state television aired Monday what it said were confessions by captured militants tied to al Qaeda who said they had planned deadly chemical attacks that could have killed thousands of people.
Authorities had already reported the plot earlier this month, but the confessions shown on a prime-time broadcast provided further details of the planned attacks.
The arrested militants, who included Syrians, said they were ordered by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, accused by Washington of being a top al Qaeda supporter, to attack targets that included the heavily fortified U.S. embassy and intelligence headquarters.
The head of the group, Azmi Jayousi, said that he first met Zarqawi during his training in an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and met him again in Iraq without giving any dates.
"I pledged allegiance to Zarqawi and after the fall of Afghanistan I met him again in Iraq," said Jayousi, who had clearly identifiable bruises on his face and palm.
"Zarqawi commissioned me to go to Jordan to wage military action," Jayousi said in the 20-minute broadcast where he calmly recounted how he carefully planned with his accomplices the chemical attacks using trucks.
A narrator, without any detailed explanation, said at least 80,000 people would have been killed in the attack by toxic fumes spreading over a radius of more than three miles. The high figure cited was symptomatic of the high tension prevailing in the kingdom, with wide media coverage of raids and street checks.
Jayousi said he set up a chemical factory near the northern city of Irbid, close to the Syrian border, and received $170,000 in financing and logistic aid along with fake passports and forged banknotes from Suleiman Darwish, an alleged Zarqawi aide living in Syria.
The broadcast showed graphic pictures of the location of the alleged chemical plants and the trucks that were to be used in the attacks. It did not say what type of chemical explosives were being prepared.
Another captured militant shown on television was a Syrian national, Annas Sheikh Amin, 18, who said he went to Afghanistan where he was trained at a Qaeda camp before heading to Jordan.
Jordanian Hussein Sharif said he was driven by a fervent belief that the attacks would promote the cause of Muslims.
"I agreed to this operation because I thought it would serve Islam," a bearded Sharif said.
Security sources said al Qaeda had sought to punish Jordan for supporting Washington's efforts to pacify post-war Iraq, and was incensed over covert aid Jordan had given to the U.S. military campaign there.
Jordanian officials said ten days ago they had found explosive-carrying cars believed to have been loaded by an underground group linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Jayousi said he planned the attack with trucks laden with 20 tons of explosives. King Abdullah said after the arrest of the group earlier this month that it had had saved "thousands of lives"
Jordanian intelligence officials have often boasted in recent years that their efforts have foiled plots by al Qaeda-linked militants to launch deadly attacks on Western targets and government installations.
04/27/04 00:21
Wonder why the original arrest did not make bigger news here, guess the bombs have to explode to make the news...
