Jordanian Court Upholds Iraqi Woman’s Death Sentence

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Jordan's highest court rejected an appeal by an Iraqi woman sentenced to hang for her role in the al-Qaida-led triple hotel bombing that killed 60 people in Jordan's worst terror attack, according to court documents obtained Saturday.

Thirty-five year old Sajida al-Rishawi (photo left) was supposed to be one of the suicide bombers in the Nov. 9, 2005 attack on a Jordanian Wedding party. She entered a hotel ballroom with her husband, both strapped with explosives belts. Her husband set off his belt, ripping through a wedding party in the room.

In a televised confession al-Rishawi initially admitted that her own belt had failed to detonate and she fled, but she later changed her story, claiming that she was an unwilling participant in the attacks and never tried to set off her blast belt.

Al-Rishawi was one of seven defendants in the case and like the other six, who remain at large and were tried in absentia last year, all were sentenced in Jordan's military court. Like al-Rishawi, the other six were sentenced to death by hanging last September. Al-Rishawi appealed her sentence immediately.

But Jordan's Appeals court said it "ratified" the military court's death sentence because al-Rishawi was "guilty beyond doubt of possessing explosives and having had the intention and the will to carry out terrorist attacks whose outcome is destruction and death."


There’s an object lesson in all that for the U.S. – our civilian courts should follow Jordan’s example and accept our Military Tribunal’s rightful authority in terror cases.