Jordan: 4 get death penalty for targeting US ships

One of the rockets fired by the terror cell fell across the border in Israel, slightly wounding an Israeli taxi driver.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
jordan bombing 88 (photo credit: )
jordan bombing 88
(photo credit: )
A Jordanian military court on Thursday convicted three Syrians and one Iraqi and sentenced them to death for firing rockets at two US warships in Aqaba Bay in August 2005. The rockets missed, but the attempt was the most serious attack on the US Navy since the bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. Fired from a warehouse on the outskirts of Aqaba, one rocket landed outside a Jordanian military hospital on the far side of the bay and killed a Jordanian soldier. Another fell across the border in Israel. It did not explode but slightly wounded an Israeli taxi driver. One of the Syrians, Mohammed Hassan Abdullah al-Sihly, is in police custody. His sons, Abdul-Rahman al-Sihly and Abdullah al-Sihly, and the Iraqi, Amar al-Samera'i, remain at large and were tried in absentia. The court acquitted Mohammed al-Sihly's three other sons and convicted and sentenced five others to various jail terms ranging from two to 10 years. It was not immediately known if the defendants would appeal their verdicts. During the 10-minute hearing, security was intensified and a helicopter hovered over the court's grounds. Police inside the court were armed with machine guns. Prosecutors also said in their indictment that the defendants also planned to attack the US and Israeli embassies in Amman, and they were providing funds to the insurgents in Iraq.