Jordan jails vet for plot to blow up Israeli embassy

A court in Jordan on Monday sentenced a veterinary surgeon to three years’ hard labor for plotting a suicide car bombing outside the Israeli embassy in Amman.

The verdict was handed down by the state security court.

The 54-year-old was arrested in September 2014 after his car exploded in the garage of his house in Irbid province north of the capital.

The charges said that the vet, who had been experimenting with explosives, was planning the attack as a response to Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip in July and August last year.

Earlier this year, Jordan handed down jail sentences against seven of its citizens and one Syrian for planning attacks on the Israeli embassy and US soldiers in the country.

According to a judicial source, the plots in question would have involved “terrorist acts” against the US service personnel at a Jordan military base in al-Moaqar in 2006 and against the embassy in Amman in 2008.

The charges included “plotting to commit a terrorist act, and possession of weapons and explosives for use” in those acts.

The leader of the group, a Jordanian, was given a 10-year term with hard labor, while his remaining compatriots were jailed for between two and three years under the same conditions. The Syrian, who was tried in absentia, was sentenced to 15 years.

The defendants, who were arrested in 2014, were also accused of collaborating with the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah in 2011 and 2012 in a bid to ship arms from Jordan to the Palestinian territories.

Jordan amended its anti-terror law last year to make it an offense to “belong to or attempt to join any armed group or terrorist organization.”

Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab states to have signed peace treaties with the Jewish state, in 1994 and 1979 respectively.