Jordan’s state security court on Sunday handed down life sentences to eight men charged with terrorist acts, in a retrial ordered by the kingdom's highest court, reported the Jordan Times.
Following the tribunal's deliberations, Colonel Saleh Raggad read out the verdicts against eight of the defendants, all members of the Reform and Challenge organization.
The ninth defendant, a former police officer, also received the same sentence as was handed down by the State Security Court in 1999 — 15 years with hard labor.
In April, the Court of Cassation overruled the military court's 1999 sentence and returned the defendants' files for a retrial.
In 1999, the military tribunal convicted nine out of 13 alleged members of Reform and Challenge for a series of attacks in Amman.
The other four were acquitted for lack of evidence.
The defendants were accused of using primitive, homemade explosives in 1998 in a series of bombings that caused no casualties but damaged several parked cars.
The court based its demand for a retrial on the penal code's description of “terrorist acts,” which, according to a judicial source, did not cover the targets of the accused group — parked private vehicles.
The penal code stipulates that terrorist acts are those targeted against public property – Albawaba.com
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