Al-Zarqawi's message of justification for terrorism convinces no one in Jordan while new threats are issued to the king and country, reports Sana Abdallah in Amman As Jordan licked its wounds in the aftermath of three suicide attacks in three Amman hotels that killed 60 and injured 100 others, the kingdom's number one enemy, native national Abu Musaab Al-Zarqawi, released an audiotape trying to justify the operations and containing further threats against the country. The audio message, which could not be independently verified but which experts take seriously, saying the voice resembles that of Al-Zarqawi in previous recordings, was posted on an Islamic website on 18 November. The message was an obvious attempt to regain whatever little sympathy Al-Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda lost in the triple attack. While the taped recording appeared almost apologetic, it only added insult to injury for the Jordanian populace, shocked and outraged by the hotel bombings, taking to the streets in the tens of thousands to denounce Al-Zarqawi and terrorism. The targeting of a local wedding party at the Radisson SAS Hotel -- where 30 were killed, including the bride's parents and the groom's father -- hit the Jordanians hardest. Al-Zarqawi's message sought to "assure you that we are extremely careful over your lives, for you are more beloved to us than ourselves. For those Muslims who were killed, we ask God to show them mercy, for they were not targets. We did not and will not think for one moment to target them, even if they were people of immorality and corruption." The speaker on the voice recording tried to discredit the official story that a suicide bomber blew himself up in the midst of the wedding party, saying it was a "lie". Addressing Jordanians, he insisted that, "we did not undertake to blow up any wedding parties," in which 17 of the dead were Palestinians from the West Bank. Rather, Al-Zarqawi alleges the bomber targeted a hall where Israeli and American intelligence officials were meeting and that part of the roof fell in on the wedding hall, either from the blast "or even from a separate bomb placed in the roof of the ceiling." Independent analysts say Al-Zarqawi is trying to play on sceptics and to feed several conspiracy theories that emerged with photographs that showed the ceiling at the wedding reception had in fact fallen in, with some questioning how an explosives belt strapped around someone's waist could lead to such a collapse. A poll conducted by Jordan's independent Al-Ghad after the bombings showed that two-thirds of Jordanians had changed their views on Al-Qaeda for the worse, something analysts said Al-Zarqawi must have known before he issued his taped message. Al-Zarqawi insisted that "we chose these hotels after more than two months of thorough observation, which showed they were centres for the Jewish, American and Jordanian security," and accused the Jordanian government of hiding Israeli and American casualties. But in what officials and analysts say is an indication of Al-Zarqawi's desperation and confusion following the widespread popular anger towards him, he failed to mention the Iraqi woman whom Al-Qaeda in Iraq earlier claimed had taken part in the "Amman invasion." After Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility, authorities arrested an Iraqi woman, Sajida Mubarak Atrous Al-Rishawi, who made a televised confession on 12 November that her explosives belt failed to detonate at the hotel wedding party after her husband succeeded in detonating his. In almost the same breath as he tried to regain sympathy, Al-Zarqawi issued new threats against Jordan and King Abdullah, describing him as a "descendant of traitors," and warning the monarch will "not escape [his] fate". "We will reach your head and cut it off." He described his home country, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, as a "protector" for Israel, that helps the US military in Iraq, saying Jordan has become a "swamp of obscenity, with alcohol and prostitution in its tourist sites." He warned Jordanians to stay away from hotels, tourist sites, military bases and diplomatic missions of countries participating in the war in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi's message failed in its attempt to regain sympathy or even instil fear, although security measures were significantly augmented, up to unprecedented levels, at all hotels, tourist sites, diplomatic missions, and other public places such as malls and supermarkets, where everyone entering was being searched. The government did not want to "dignify" his statement with a response, but officials said he was lying about not intending to target civilians, and the Islamic opposition movement again condemned him as being a criminal with nothing to do with Islam. His own family, Al-Khalayleh, from the prominent Jordanian Bani Hassan clan, disowned him in a large statement advertised in local newspapers on 20 November, in which they pledged allegiance to the king. More than 75 members of Al-Khalayleh family who signed the statement, including his brother, renounced Al-Zarqawi -- whose real name is Ahmad Fadeel Al-Khalayleh and who took his nickname from the town of Zarqa where he was born -- and said he is not a Jordanian "who drank from its water." Al-Zarqawi, with a $25 million US bounty on his head, known to have been a street thug in his impoverished Zarqa town in his youth, went to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets with the Mujahadeen. He served seven years in a Jordanian prison for plotting to overthrow the monarchy and establish an Islamic state, but was released in a general amnesty in 1999 when King Abdullah assumed the throne after the death of his father, King Hussein. He fled Jordan shortly afterwards to an unknown destination and was tried in absentia and sentenced to death in 2002 for terror- related conspiracies. Jordanian authorities believe that shortly before the US-led invasion on Iraq, he was organising Al-Qaeda cells in northern Iraq, where he had taken refuge with sympathetic Islamic organisations.
