Jordan has won US praise for the arrests of two al-Qaeda members suspected of assassinating a U.S. official and who allegedly planned a string of other terror attacks against foreign missions in Amman.
A Libyan and a Jordanian national were arrested Saturday for the October 28 killing of Laurence Foley. "The two men are members of al-Qaeda," Information Minister Mohammed Adwan said.
"They had been in contact with one of the senior officials of that network, a Jordanian fugitive named Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayleh, who is also known as Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi," Adwan conveyed, according to AFP.
Adwan said that the Libyan, Salem Saad Salem bin Soued, and the Jordanian, Yasser Fathi Ibrahim, admitted to membership in al-Qaeda and links to Zarqawi during interrogations.
They took their orders from Zarqawi who had instructed the pair to "carry out attacks against embassy and foreign diplomats, as well as security forces in Jordan", he added. Zarqawi also gave them with weapons and money, and tried to "provide his accomplices ... with rockets to be used in terrorist operations."
The US State Department welcomed the results of the two-month probe, while an embassy spokesman told AFP: "We thank the Jordanian government for its diligence and aggressiveness in working to bring Laurence Foley's killers to justice.
"We will continue to cooperate vigorously with the Jordanian authorities in pursuing this case," he said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
