Posted on 07/16/2002 2:25:37 PM PDT by knighthawk
Amman — The State Security Court on Monday handed down 15-year prison sentences to several defendants in two high- profile felony cases that went to trial last year.
In one case, the court sentenced three men to death in the trial of 12 Jordanians and an Egyptian national accused of conspiracy to commit “terrorist acts” in Jordan, AFP reported.
But the presiding judge of the military tribunal immediately reduced the death sentence against Jordanian nationals Bilal
Khreissat, Jaafar Awad and Jamal Moghrabi to 15 years of hard labour, an AFP correspondent reported.
Three other Jordanian men were given each a 15-year jail sentence with hard labour while the rest, including Egyptian national Wasser Saleh, were acquitted.
The trial of the group known as Al Khalaya (the cells) opened on July 10 of last year, five months after the men were arrested allegedly before carrying out attacks on Israeli and Western targets in Jordan.
The military prosecutor accused them at the time of planning terrorist attacks, possessing and manufacturing explosives.
The defendants' lawyer, Samih Khreiss, dismissed the verdicts as unfair and told AFP he will appeal.
“The verdicts were very tough and initially there was no reason for such a result. I will appeal the sentences,” Khreiss said, reiterating that his clients were “not guilty” and that there were “no targets to be attacked.”
Udwan Mills verdict handed down
Also yesterday, the court sentenced three people to 15 years in prison after convicting them of committing armed robberies and burglaries in 2001.
The court acquitted 10 other people, including a minor and four women, of charges of forming armed gangs.
All 13 defendants are allegedly affiliated with the so-called Udwan Mills gang, and were standing trial at the State Security Court on charges of committing several robberies, possessing automatic weapons, dealing with stolen property and other felonies.
The three sentenced to 15 years were Sharif Ayed, 20, his brother Mohammad, 27, and Ali Mahmoud Hassan, who was tried in absentia. The court acquitted the three of charges of possessing automatic weapons and forming armed gangs “for lack of evidence.”
The remaining 10 who were acquitted by the same tribunal of charges of forming armed gangs included five siblings: Ahmad, Assef, Thaer, Jihan, and Nisreen Ayed. The remaining five were Khalid Barakat, Amneh Hussein, Ahlam Mohammad and Mohammad Hussein.
The prosecution charge sheet said the group was part of what the authorities described as one of the most dangerous gangs to operate in Jordan. Four members of the gang were executed in 2001, convicted of robbing and murdering five people over a five-year span starting in 1989.
Six others received various prison terms ranging from 10 years to life for committing more than 200 crimes, including murder, attempted murder, theft, using forged documents, and kidnapping.
Monday's 13 defendants were part of the group that was sentenced in the mid-1990s, according to the charge sheet.
Some of the members were acquitted by the Criminal Court in 1995, while others spent prison terms after being convicted in 1995 of committing various felonies, and were released in 2001 before being captured again in July the same year.
The group was nicknamed “Udwan Mills” because they were captured in a police raid of the Udwan Mills village near Sukhneh in 1992.
The verdict will automatically be reviewed by a higher court within the next 30 days.
Drug traffickers sentenced to hard labour
The State Security Court on Monday also sentenced two Egyptian drug traffickers to 15 years of hard labour each, seven months after they were arrested on a vessel in the Red Sea, court officials said in an AFP report.
Moish Tarabin, 38, and Awwad Tarabin, 24, both residents of the Sinai peninsula, were arrested by a naval patrol in November 2001, the officials told AFP.
The two were caught while attempting to escape from an Israeli naval boat patrolling the Israeli side of the Red Sea, according to AFP, in a thwarted attempt to sell 613 kilogrammes of hashish to unidentified Israeli clients.
The two men had had an appointment to meet their client in Israeli waters. They fled into Jordanian waters where they were eventually arrested.
A third member of the Tarabin family managed to escape but he was also sentenced to 15 years with hard labour in absentia by the court, according to the AFP report.
The men were each also ordered to pay a JD10,000 fine.
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