A Jordanian Salafist-jihadist cleric with ties to al-Qaida said on Saturday that
jihadists from his country had planned to carry out a suicide attack in
Israel.
Abu Muhammad al-Tahawi said that Jordanian Salafist-jihadists had
wanted to carry out an attack but the plan had failed.
However, Tahawi
said that Jordanian Salafists were “getting closer to Palestine via Jordan,
Syria and Lebanon,” according to a report on Jordan’s Albawaba news website on
Sunday.
“Our Palestinian brothers who are now in Aleppo [Syria] will then
go to Israel to fight there,” he said, speaking at a funeral ceremony for a
Salafist killed fighting against President Bashar Assad’s forces in Deraa,
Syria. “Jihad requires patience.”
Tahawi’s remarks come after the
Jordanian Salafist jihadist movement said that to date it has sent 250 fighters
to Syria to join the fight against Assad, the Arabic-language Jordan Zad news
site reported on Sunday.
According to the report, a source within the
movement said that some of the Jordanian Salafists have assumed leading roles
around Damascus, Aleppo, Deraa and Idlib.
According to the Long War
Journal, an American news website, many foreign jihadists including from Egypt
and Jordan are fighting in Syria in the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al- Nusra
terrorist group, which has carried out several suicide bombings at government
and military installations. Jabhat al-Nusra is active across all Sunni areas of
Syria, and has carried out most of its attacks in Damascus, according to Foreign
Policy magazine.
In May, Tahawi published a written statement in support
of Jabhat al-Nusra, calling on Muslims to go and fight in Syria against
Assad.
In his statement, Tahawi praised suicide bombing attacks in Syria
and elsewhere, saying that the “people who wrapped explosive belts around
themselves” in Iraq and Afghanistan helped defeat the US, and that suicide
bombers would also expel Israel and the US from Muslim lands in the
Levant.
Last week, the Jordanian authorities arrested two Salafists,
Zayed Sweiti and Firas Khalailah, as they returned to Jordan from
Syria.
Both men are Jordanian cousins of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who
founded al-Qaida in Iraq.
Jordan has an estimated 5,000 Salafist Jihadist
supporters, according to United Press International.
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