Female Bomber In Jordan, Zarqawi's Sister?

[Annie]

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-13461879,00.html?f=rss

I Tried To Detonate'
Updated: 17:11, Sunday November 13, 2005

A woman has made a televised confession over the recent terror bombings in Jordan.

Sajida al Rishawi said she had tried to blow herself up alongside her husband in an Amman hotel on Wednesday.

"We went into the hotel," she said. "He (my husband) took a corner and I took another.

"There was a wedding in the hotel. There were women and children.

"My husband executed the attack. I tried to detonate and it failed. People started running and I ran with them."
One of the bombed hotels
One of the bombed hotels

More than 50 people were killed when three suicide bombers detonated explosives at three hotels in the Jordanian capital.

Officials believe Rishawi's husband was a bomber who died in one of three simultaneous attacks at the Hyatt, Radisson and Days Inn hotels.

It was not clear under which circumstances Rishawi gave her confession.

She spoke with an Iraqi accent and said she came from the Iraqi city of Ramadi.

Officials claim Rishawi is the sister of a former senior aide to Abu Musab al Zarqawi - the leader of terror group al Qaeda in Iraq.

The group has already claimed responsibility for the bombings.

 

[Annie]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2005111...s36Qyas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b3JuZGZhBHNlYwM3MjE-

Sun Nov 13, 7:36 AM ET

AMMAN (AFP) - Jordan has said it had arrested a woman who was part of the team of suicide bombers who carried out the attacks on three luxury hotels in Amman but had failed to blow up her explosives.
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Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Moasher told a press conference Sunday that the Iraqi woman, the wife of one of the bombers, was in custody, in a major breakthrough in the probe into the attacks that killed 57 people and wounded about 100 more.

He said the woman would appear on Jordanian television to give details of Wednesday's bombings that have sharply jolted Jordan, one of the most stable countries in the Middle East and a close US ally.

The woman is suspected of being involved in the preparation of the attack on the Radisson SAS hotel, one of three targeted by the bombers.

"She took part in preparing an attack by her husband on the Radisson Hotel by bringing explosives into the hotel," another Jordanian official said.

Moasher identified the woman as Sajida Mubarak al-Rishai and said she was the sister of a key aide to Al-Qaeda's Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a fugitive Jordanian Islamist who is Iraq's most wanted man.

He said she failed to blow up her explosives charge in the hotel ballroom where a wedding reception was in full swing.

"Her husband asked her to leave the wedding party. Once she did he detonated himself successfully," Moasher added.

He showed pictures of the explosives belt worn by the woman, which he said show "the metal balls that were also attached to the belt so that they can inflict the largest number of casualties."

He said she was the sister of Zarqawi's "emir" in the restive western Iraqi province of Al-Anbar who was killed in Fallujah.

Investigators said Saturday they had identified those who attacked the hotels as Iraqi men who arrived from their homeland just two days before the bombings.

The authories have arrested at least 12 suspects and questioned scores more over the attacks, which were claimed by Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda group in Iraq.

"The investigation has shown that Al-Qaeda was responsible for this attack, specifically the men of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," Moasher said on Saturday.

Jordanian-born Zarqawi was released from jail in 1999 as part of general amnesty granted by King Abdullah II but was last year sentenced to death by a Jordanian court for the 2002 murder of a US diplomat.

"We are going to crack down and take the fight to Zarqawi," King Abdullah said in an interview with CNN television on Saturday.

 

[Annie]

http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=698

11/13/2005
A big victory in The War On Terror
— site admin @ 3:21 pm

And an information victory at that. Today Jordan put a captured “would be suicide terrorist” on tv. (Link is to an AP report.)

Why is this a victory? Because the harsh evil of Al Qaeda is front and center in Sunni Arab media.

The lede, with the essential information:

Strapped with a disabled explosives belt, an Iraqi woman arrested Sunday confessed on television to trying to blow herself up with her husband in one of three suicide attacks earlier this week that killed 57 people.

The 35-year-old woman the sister of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s right-hand man who was killed by U.S. forces in Iraq appeared on Jordanian state TV hours after she was captured by security forces who were tipped off by an al-Qaida claim that a husband-and-wife team participated in Wednesday’s bombings.

Looking nervous and wringing her hands, Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, 35, described how she failed to blow herself up during a wedding reception at the Radisson SAS hotel on Wednesday night after struggling with the cord on her explosives belt.

“My husband wore an (explosives-packed) belt and put one on me. He taught me how to use it,” al-Rishawi said, wearing a white head scarf, a black gown and a disabled bomb belt tied around her waist.

“My husband detonated (his bomb) and I tried to explode my belt but it wouldn’t,” she said. “People fled running and I left running with them.”…​

The woman and her husband are Iraqis, so the early reports that the attackers were Iraqi nationals seem to be confirmed. Her brother was also a member of Al Qaeda–and he’s dead. Of course Zarqawi hails from Jordan (the town of Zarqa) and no doubt Al Qaeda has “supporting elements” inside Jordan.
The AP reports says: “…No Jordanians were involved in the actual attacks, but several Jordanian followers of al-Zarqawi have been arrested…”

Another a propos quote:

“We are partners in facing terrorism,” Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press. “Amman’s ordeal and Jordan’s ordeal is the ordeal of all Iraqis.”

The terrorists’ “target is to kill tolerance and destroy coexistence in Arab and Muslim cities,” al-Dulaimi said.​

Why is this a victory? Because it demonstrates, unequivocally, that Al Qaeda is merely Murder Incorporated, and most of its victims are Muslims. Al Qaeda’s biggest recruiting tool was – and is— the political failure of the Arab Muslim world. In this dysfunctional world tyranny and terror reinforce one another, with the people of the Middle East the inevitable victims.

From one of my Creators Syndicate columns in October 2005:

Undermining its megalomaniacal appeal meant exposing it as the inhuman, ungodly Mass Murder Inc. it is. The optimal outcome would be to expose Al-Qaida as a threat to Muslims and detrimental to the best ideals of Islam.

When Al-Qaida’s zealots blow up trains in Spain or subways in London, those are attacks of their choosing conducted on “infidel terrain.” The genius of the war in Iraq is a brutal but necessary form of strategic judo: It brought the War on Terror into the heart of the Middle East and onto Arab Muslim turf. In Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s theo-fascists have been spilling Arab blood, and Al Jazeera has noticed that, too.

Arabs have also seen the Iraqi people’s struggle and their emerging political alternative to despotism and feudal autocracy.​