Jordan MP’s son joins Islamic State, becomes suicide bomber

A Jordanian parliament member said his son carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq just three months after the family failed to prevent him from joining the Islamic State extremist group.

Jordan is part of an international military coalition against IS, but the group has some grassroots support in the country.

Parliamentarian Mazen Dalaeen told The Associated Press he last saw his 23-year-old son Mohammed in June in Ukraine, where he was studying medicine.

Dalaeen said his son left for Iraq via Turkey and Syria the next day, after they argued about the terror group.

He said Saturday he learned of Mohammed’s death late last week from IS-linked websites that posted a photo of his son and said he participated in a triple suicide car bomb attack on an Iraqi army post.

“He considered me and his mother to be apostates and was trying to convince us to join IS,” he said.

The MP said he had last heard from Mohammed in August when he sent a message that he “had been signed up for a suicide attack soon.”

In a statement posted on Twitter on Wednesday, IS claimed a triple car bombing on the northern outskirts of Ramadi, a city west of Baghdad under IS control since May.

Iraqi military sources confirmed suicide attacks in the area Tuesday but were unable to identify the bombers.

“Three suicide car bombs targeted Iraqi security forces in their progress in Al-Jaraishi,” an army colonel told AFP.

“The security forces repelled the attacks using Russian-made Kornet missiles,” he said.

Musa Abdullat, a leading Jordanian lawyer for Islamist groups, told AFP up to 4,000 Jordanians are members of jihadist groups in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

“Eighty percent of them have joined IS,” he said, adding that 420 Jordanian jihadists had been killed in Iraq and Syria since 2011.