Jordan sentences gunman to death for lethal attack
Jordanian national Mahmud Masharfeh will be hanged for killing 5 intelligence staff members in Baqaa refugee camp
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AMMAN, Jordan — An assailant who killed five people in a June shooting attack on a branch of Jordan’s intelligence agency was sentenced to death Thursday, a defense lawyer said.
Amman’s state security court “sentenced the criminal Mahmud Masharfeh to death by hanging for his terrorist act against the intelligence agency,” Jordan’s Petra news agency said.
Amman portrayed the shooting at the time as a “terrorist attack,” one of several violent incidents in the pro-Western kingdom over the past year linked to Islamic militants.
Masharfeh, a Jordanian national, was arrested hours after the June 6 attack in the Baqaa camp north of the capital.
Jordan is part of a US-led military coalition against Islamic State extremists who control large areas in neighboring Iraq and Syria. At home, Jordan has clamped down on suspected extremists, including jailing those who support IS on social media.
Defendant Masharfeh, 22, displayed no emotion when he heard the decision, said Abdel Hakim al-Asseri, a defense lawyer.
Al-Asseri represented another defendant, who was sentenced to a year in prison for selling a weapon to Masharfeh. The lawyer said his client “sold the weapon, but his intention was not terrorism or the harm the country, just to sell the weapon as any normal guy who is selling his weapon.”
The attack took place on the first day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. It targeted a local intelligence agency branch near the Palestinian refugee camp of Baqaa, close to the capital of Amman.
The assailant walked into the building, opened fire and killed five staff members, including guards. He fled, but was arrested several hours later at a mosque in a different town.
Jordan’s government clamped a news blackout on the case.
No group claimed responsibility for the Baqaa shooting, which authorities said was “an individual and isolated act.”
The shooting exposed Jordan’s vulnerability to attacks, including those by “lone wolf” assailants.
Two weeks later a car bomb killed seven soldiers near a makeshift Syrian refugee camp in Jordan’s remote north. That attack was claimed by IS.
In November, a police captain opened fire in an international police training center in Amman, killing five, including two Americans.
The Times of Israel Community.