So a lot has happened in the past 48 hours or so. Al-Queda prisoners riot in jails and other Al-Queda members attempt an attack on our soil.
I have to say as a citizen the country’s security forces handled these situations fairly well. The prison situation seems to have broke with tradition according to fellow Jordanian blogger Khalaf.
According to the Jordan Times, the GID has managed to “foil several terrorist plots in the Kingdom since the beginning of 2006 and seized automatic weapons, explosives, rocket propelled-grenades, which were brought into Jordan from neighboring countries by terrorist groups.”
It’s a very scary thought to say the least. Everyday citizens will constantly underestimate any sense of security and what it takes to preserve it, until of course that sense is broken.
Terrorism in Jordan is a very real issue. I know everyone would like to remain thinking of it as a stable “peaceful kingdom” but it takes a lot to preserve whatever stability or peace we enjoy. Jordan is still the Holy Grail for terrorists, a pro-US monarchy that is surrounded geographically by many entrances and many unstable nations. These latest terrorists were from Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, probably entering through Syria.
I think this may be the point of announcing these foiled attempts every now and then; it reminds the people that terrorism is still real and that it did not start or end with November 9th. It makes people less and less sympathetic to Al-Queda as well, which in turn encourages social responsibility. More and more people will be willing to refuse the harbor or help and of these terrorists.
What is admirable I believe is how such attacks are avoided without resorting to a state of security the borders on martial law. You would think it would be harder to get through the borders. Perhaps it should be.
As for prisoners I think they should be isolated. Most of them are tried so why do they wait so long to punish them? Most of them are supposed to be executed, so why isn’t that happening sooner? Instead we have terrorists now in Iraq kidnapping our citizens in order to exchange them for terrorists we’ve captured. Try them in the state security court quickly and then execute them. At least it will send a message to everyone else who tries to launch an attack on our soil. Instead we have a few hundred of these men just hanging around it seems.
Jordan’s Prince Faisal visits a policeman, injured during clashes with Islamist prisoners at Jweida prison, in Amman March 1, 2006.
What bothered me about this issue is that the Jordanian security forces completely denied (in the beginning) that anything was happening in the prisons. C’mon, we live in the day of minute by minute news…you can’t hide anything anymore.
moi, i think that’s the problem moi, this isn’t an ordinary riot. this involved terrorists coordinating with terrorists. to release this kind of information in a day and age where we have minute by minute news you’ll find them garnering more support. this is also a time when Jordan is being targeted all the time by AlQueda and if they are within our borders they will probably be trigger happy when seeing their fellow members rioting in prisons.
state security is a tricky thing, you tell the people only what they need to know and when they need to know it because even zarqawi probably gets AlJazeera
that’s just my thoughts though
I used to know a guy that used to tell me while we were having a casual conversation : There are 3 sides to every story, the first is your side, the second is my side, and the third is the TRUTH. Therefore, we may hear from you, you may hear from me, but who knows that any of us is telling the truth ! So unless we know what truly happened inside those prisons through honest to goodness investigative reporting by free press that is allowed to get the information, the truth will never be known.An informed citizenry is an asset to the state security apparatus. Public debate about important issues is absent, every time there is a problem we extinguish it as quickly as possible and before you any of its ramifications it vanishes into oblivion until the next problem come along. You know and I know that the prison over population problem was a headline issue little over a year ago, then we haven’t heard a thing about it until yesterday. Over crowding should never be occurring in prisons, it is the number one problem in any prison. Hard core prisoners population should never be mixed with misdemeanor and other light criminals. I guess what I’m saying here is that unless we address the questions of what happened? how did it happen? and how do we prevent it from happening again, we will be hearing about this prison situation again and again.
Zarqawi himself was tutored in a jordanian prison prior to his release and then departing to iraq. the prison situation is a very delicate one in jordan. and its not as simple as to what meets the eye of the basics of management and logic. i do not want to sound condescending, but the fact of the matter is, when the security forces have to deal with an upstanding respectable citizen its much simpler and much easier than dealing with convicted felons with nothing better to do than to stir up trouble. let alone dealing with hardcore islamist terrorists. which unfortunately are found in abundance in our jails.
how can you sympathise with the man who assassinated foley? and the likes of him. and the types of people there get worse to the level of al jayoussi who if had succeeded would have killed an estimated 80,000 people in amman with the chemical bomb? these people were calling for the release of atrous who is the 4th suicide bomber on that miserbale day in november?
all the international press mentioned that the reason for the riots was not over crowding in the jails, they were trying to prevent the man who assassinated foley from being transfered to another prison. they want to stay together so they can further learn from each other, and possibly have an organization on the inside of the jail! the coordination of the riots in all three jails is no coincidence.
ask yourself this: how come they called for the release of atrous after jordan successfully freed the embassy driver? they tried to use him as leverage for her and it didnt work. now they tried to get us on the inside with the jail riots.
the foiling of another attempt against jordan is something we should be thankful for, and yes we should be counting our blessings. and there have been many attempts which have been foiled in the past. we take our security and safety for granted. i say the security forces could not have done a better job, and we dont even feel the enormous effort they put it in to guarantee our safety. they are far more experienced than us at handling terrorists who are plotting against you and me and the rest of the jordanian people, and the process to execute the sentences should be much faster so they are an example to zarqawi and his followers. the man which has been convicted and should be executed for assasinating foley is still alive, and he was the cause of all of this. that took place in 2001. its about time the judicial system speeds up the sentences of these sick people who want to play God with other peoples lives. so i say ya3teehom alf 3afia.. ou 7ayhom il nashama.