From: steven@maui.cs.ucla.edu (Steve Berson)
Subject: Re: Sentencing in Jordan
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 21:24:42 GMT

aaldoubo@copper.denver.colorado.edu (Shaqeeqa) writes:
>From the Associated Press, November 11, 1992
>	2 Sentenced in Jordan for Sedition Roles
>AMMAN, Jordan -- A military court sentenced two Islamic lawmakers to
>20 years at hard labor yesterday for belonging to an underground,
>Iranian-backed group that allegedly seeks to overthrow King Hussein.
[ ... remainder of AP story omitted to save space ... ]

>True democracy at its best - Middle East style:  convictions for
>belonging to a movement which *allegedly* sought the overthrow
>of a corrupt regime.  Typical measures by dictatorships to rid
>their political opponents/critics through imprisonment without
>formal charges. 
>Anisa

From the Wednesday, November 11, 1992 Los Angeles Times
(posted without permission)

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2 Jordanian Lawmakers Guilty of Anti-King Plot

Mideast: They were accused of taking guns and
money from Iran.  Trial was test of nation's effort
to balance democracy and Islamic fundamentalism.

By Mark Fineman
Times Staff Writer

Amman, Jordan - A military court convicted two prominent
members of the Jordanian Parliment on Tuesday of plotting
with Iran to overthrow King Hussein.  But the tribunal
stopped short of ordering death sentences in a case that
became an unprecented test of Jordan's struggle to balance
the forces of democracy and Islamic fundamentalism.

In sentencing the two popular, fundamentalist legislators
to 20 years of hard labor, the court declared in a 47-page
verdict that Laith Shbeilat and Yacoub Qarrash had abused
Jordan's new democracy.  The court said they used their
positions to create an underground, pro-Iranian revolutionary
group that sought to replace Jordan's long-reigning monarch
with an Islamic "caliphate."

The verdict, which many Jordanians expect King Hussein to
set aside with a royal pardon on his 57th birthday on
Saturday, ended a five week public trial that had riveted
and polarized Jordanian public opinion.  The case also drew
the attention of governments throughout the Middle East and
North Africa, where the relationship between democracy and
Islamic fundamentalism has raised similar controversy and
debate.

Jordanian police had surrounded the small military courthouse
in a blue-collar neighborhood of Amman where the verdict was
delivered Tuesday morning.  Authorities successfully barred
protestors on both sides of the case, although there had been
sit-ins and demonstrations during the trial.

Inside, the courtroom was packed with spectators who watched
the two parlimentary deputies - who had been on a hunger strike
for three weeks while jailed - show little emotion as the chief
military judge read the verdict for two hours.

Prosecutors charged that Shbeilat and Qarrash had accepted
automatic weapons and $200,000 worth of German marks from
the Iranian government last April to finance an organization
called Vanguard of the Islamic Youth.  They did this after
meeting with high-level government officials in Tehran in
1990, prosecutors asserted,

Most foreign diplomats who followed the trial after the two
deputies were arrested last August viewed the case as a
reminder by Hussein that democracy has its limits in an
often-violent region where plots, subversion and revolution
are all too common.  Most said they believe the king, having
made his point, will follow Arab tradition with a pardon that
will bar both men from holding public office.

Jordan's king has, in fact, been at the forefront of the
region's slow march towards democracy, allowing in 1989 the
nation's first parlimentary elections since political parties
were banned in Jordan in 1957.

In a landmark speech last week, Hussein took pains to stress
his commitment to democracy.  His nationwide address came at
a time when the Hashemite monarch is about to leave for the
United States for more medical tests after his radical cancer
surgery last summer; most Jordanian analysts viewed his speech
as a reminder that Hussein wishes to leave an enduring democracy
in Jordan as his legacy.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve
-- 
=========================================================================
Steven Berson           UCLA Computer Science Department   (310) 825-3189
steven@cs.ucla.edu      Los Angeles, CA 90024-1596
=========================================================================
Xref: sparky talk.politics.mideast:22017 soc.culture.arabic:4843 soc.culture.lebanon:4955