Jordan convicts 5 for trying to join Syrian rebels
Defendants sentenced to hard labor for attempting to cross border and fight alongside al-Qaeda-linked group
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan’s military court convicted five Jordanians of trying to sneak into neighboring Syria to join rebels seeking to unseat President Bashar Assad.
The court sentenced the men in a brief hearing Monday to five years in jail with hard labor on charges of attempting to illegally cross the border to join a banned group.
Presiding judge Ahmed Qatarneh said the five — in their 20s and 30s — had confessed to planning to join the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, or Nusra Front.
They were arrested in February 2012 on the Jordanian-Syrian border.
The prosecutor’s indictment said the five were members of the hard-line Salafi Jihadi Movement. The group is banned in Jordan.
Security sources say several hundred Jordanians have joined rebels in Syria.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.