Word: jordanian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...part of a delegation from China. The attacks left at least 57 people dead, making them the most devastating terrorist strikes in Jordan's history, and set off reverberations throughout the Middle East. Responsibility for the attacks was claimed in an Internet posting by Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who runs al-Qaeda's operations in Iraq. The posting asserted that all three bombers and a woman it claimed was part of the team were Iraqis. Jordanian officials said Saturday the bombers were all non-Jordanians but denied that a woman was involved. The message from al-Qaeda justified...
...effort to export jihad outside Iraq. Jordan's King Abdullah II has longstanding ties to the U.S. (he went to junior high at the Eaglebrook School in Massachusetts and prep school at Deerfield Academy) and has quietly supported the U.S. war effort, despite its deep unpopularity with the Jordanian public. Jordan is a staging ground for the private contractors supplying and working with U.S. forces in Iraq. More crucially, it is where U.S. officers carry out what is, in Washington's eyes, one of the most vital tasks of the war: the training of new Iraqi military and security forces...
...Ahmad Nazzal Fadil al Khalayilah (his nom de guerre is an adaptation of Zarqa, his industrial hometown in northern Jordan) has been engaged in a long-running struggle with Jordan's King Abdullah II. Their duel began immediately after Abdullah ascended the throne in 1999, when he freed the Jordanian militant from prison in a general amnesty. Zarqawi, 39, had been jailed in the early 1990s on sedition charges after joining an Islamic fundamentalist group. He repaid Abdullah's royal gesture by starting a relentless terrorism campaign against Jordanian monarchy. In turn, Abdullah has stood firm against Islamic extremism...
...Zarqawi had his sights on Jordan long before the Iraq war. Jordanian officials accuse him of directing the so-called Millennium Plot to hit tourist sites, including the Radisson Hotel in Amman, on New Year's Eve 1999. Last year, a Jordanian court sentenced Zarqawi to death for instigating the assassination of an American diplomat in 2002. In 2004, Jordanian officials said they foiled a chemical bomb attack directed by Zarqawi that could have killed up to 20,000 people; he is currently standing trial in absentia for the plot...
...signs that the insurgency in Iraq was spilling on to Jordanian territory became apparent right after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, when Zarqawi's men launched a massive bomb attack on the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad. Just over two months ago, Zarqawi claimed credit for shoulder-fired rocket attacks on U.S. warships in Jordan's port of Aqaba. The shots missed their targets, killed two bystanders and served as a warning that more Zarqawi attacks may be on the way. Another trend worrying Jordanian officials is the substantial numbers of the Kingdom's young men who have gone...