One of Al Qaeda ideologues is being retried this week by the State Security Court in Amman for crimes he is accused of committing 15 years ago.
Sheikh Abu Qatada, Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman Omar, was handed over by the British authorities to serve his term in Jordan, in a deal too complicated to understand.
In April 1997, three terrorist explosions were carried out in Amman, by the Reform and Challenge Islamic group, whose imam is Abu Qatada, who managed to reach London via Kabul, before his trial in absentia commenced in Jordan.
One of the surprising facts that emerged from the trials is that some of the suspects accused of committing the three terrorist acts had acquired their expertise in sabotage during the two-year army compulsory service that was mandatory then.
So, preachers of the bullet, like Abu Qatada, had their newly recruited disciples trained and ready, just waiting for the order “go” following some short religious sermons about Jerusalem and the significance of jihad in Islam.
The Jordanian ideologues of Al Qaeda are surprisingly silent about the massacres committed by Hizbollah in Syria against Sunni villages and cities.
This silence was attributed to fear of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hizbollah, whose mighty hand could reach them anywhere in the Arab world. But with Hizbollah currently licking the deep wounds inflicted by the Lebanese Sunnis, and with Nasrallah being unable to commemorate the death anniversary of his hero, Imad Mughnieh, on February 12, as it has been the practice since 2008, it was expected to have Abu Qatada or his rival ideologue in Jordan, Al Maqdesi, issue some fatwas to reassure their brethren fighting in Syria and Lebanon that it is time to stop fighting a battle they will never win, but will bring more damage on their people since the key players, including Qatar, Turkey, the United States, Britain and Europe are realising the futility of a continued civil war.
It is surprising that the compulsory military flag service, which had surreptitiously and unintentionally handed over to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq highly trained, combat-ready Jordanians, is about to be introduced in the Arab Gulf countries, which would repeat the same mistakes, unless some ideological doctrinarian work accompanies the military drills.
Syria is on the verge of total chaos, following the failure of the second round of Geneva II meetings.
The ripple effect will reach the whole region, including Israel, which had sent to courts last week some Arab Israelis affiliated with Jabhat Al Nusra.
The two Jordanian ideologues, Abu Qatada and Maqdesi, in spite of their deep-seated rivalry, should be induced and manipulated to play a role in forcing the nearly 1,000 Jordanians affiliated with Al Qaeda currently fighting in Syria to save their country from the outcome of a raging war that will ultimately annihilate all combatants, whether pro-Assad or pro-Al Qaeda.
