A big success story worthy of repetition

The forcible repatriation of the fugitive from justice Awni Mutee from Turkey to Jordan to face charges of corruption and graft was no easy task. It was His Majesty King Abdullah's personal initiative and intervention with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that made the capture of Mutee possible in the first place.

The King has made the eradication of corruption one of his key policy goals. Without the cooperation of Ankara, their would have been a near-zero chance of bringing Mutee back to Jordan to face the charges against him in a court of law.

Credit goes also to Prime Minister Omar Razzaz and his team of ministers, who made the anti-corruption campaign one of the principal goals of the government. Other governmental agencies, including the police and the General Intelligence Department, have played critical roles in locating the whereabouts of the fugitive that made his apprehension a big success.

This success story is a major prize for the national efforts against corruption in all of its forms. The whole country rejoiced upon hearing of the arrest of this fugitive, who is the prime suspect in the infamous tobacco factory scandal that surfaced in July.

Many Jordanians had, for a while, given up hope of ever "catching" Mutee, since he was a man of influence with widespread "tentacles", allegedly reaching many other influential citizens. Now that the country has proved that it is able to deliver on its pledge to uproot corruption in all its forms, there is a growing expectation that this success narrative can also be repeated against other people accused in major pending corruption cases.

The public appetite is growing for a repeat of this particular case against other people who are allegedly involved in similar, if not larger, corruption cases but are still free, even though the cases against them are old and all apparent efforts to bring them to justice have failed.

If Jordan can succeed with the case of Mutee, the people may ask, why it cannot be equally successful in other outstanding corruption cases related to people who absconded from justice to foreign land to escape the Jordanian criminal jurisdiction. No doubt the government aims to do just that and will bring all other accused people to justice as soon as possible.