Middle East Aggregator

The Iraqi antiquities department has taken delivery of 11 ancient ceremonial seals that were looted after the US-led invasion of the country in 2003.

Originally from the national museum, the artifacts, some of which date from 3,000BC, were seized by US customs officials in the city of Philadelphia.

The circumstances of their discovery have not been made public.

Iraq has previously blamed the looting of thousands of artifacts on organised smugglers and occupying foreign troops.

The country has been carrying out a worldwide campaign to get the objects back.

In April, 700 stolen pieces - including gold coins and jewellery - were seized by customs officials in Syria and returned to Iraq.

Officials say a further 1,600 items are awaiting return from Jordan. (BBC)

Labels: Iraq, Jordan, Syria

Jordan and France on Friday signed two agreements for cooperation in the peaceful development of nuclear technology and political coordination on regional and international issues, according to an official statement.
The accords were signed by Jordanian Foreign Minister Salah Bashir and his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner, who also held talks on latest developments in the Middle East.
The nuclear cooperation agreement provides for using nuclear reactors for generation of electricity, the extraction of uranium from phosphate mines in Jordan, the training of Jordanian manpower and arrangements for nuclear safety, Chairman of the Jordanian Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) Khalid Touqan said.

Under the second agreement, Jordan and France set up "a political group that seeks to boost coordination on regional and international issues and forge a long term strategic relationship between the two countries," the statement said.
Bashir expressed his country's support for French President Nicolas Sarkozy's Med Union scheme and said Jordan "looked forward to the Paris summit in July when the plan will be officially launched". (Haaretz)

Labels: France, Jordan, Nuclear Power

Pirates on Friday released a Jordanian-flagged cargo ship from captivity off the Somali coast where it was held for nearly a week, officials said. "The ship was released after the pirates held talks with the local elders in Haradere town and it is now sailing to Mogadishu," the ship's contractor, Yusuf Moalim Ahmed, told AFP. "I am not ready to give further details on negotiations, but I can confirm that the local elders helped in the release of the ship," he added. The vessel, the MV Victoria, was seized Saturday and taken to Haradere, a coastal village around 500 kilometers north of the capital Mogadishu. The Jordanian government says the hijacked ship belongs to an Emirati company, and that it was carrying 4,200 tons of sugar donated by Denmark to the people of war-torn Somalia. In April, forces from Somalia's breakaway Puntland region rescued a hijacked vessel from the United Arab Emirates. At least one pirate was killed during the raid while seven were arrested and later sentenced to life in prison. In the same month, pirates seized a French luxury yacht and its crew of 30 and later a Spanish fishing boat. Both were released after a week. (AFP)

Labels: Jordan

Jordan's military tribunal on Wednesday commuted to life imprisonment death sentences against eight Al-Qaeda members for plotting a 2004 chemical bomb attack on the intelligence services. The state security court sentenced the group to death in 2006 for plotting the attack on the orders of slain Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Jordanian-born Zarqawi, who was killed in a US air strike two years ago in Iraq, was himself also condemned in absentia to death along with the eight, three of whom are on the run. The retrial was ordered due to flawed investigation procedures. Zarqawi has already been sentenced to death twice by Jordan's state security court for the October 2002 murder of a US diplomat in Amman and for planning to blow up a border crossing between Jordan and Iraq. Released from jail in 1999 as part of a royal amnesty, Zarqawi also claimed triple suicide bomb attacks on luxury Amman hotels in 2005 that killed 60 people. All charges have been dropped since his death. (AFP)

Labels: Al Qaeda, Jordan

Despite U.S. pressure over the past month, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has yet to provide significant financial support for the nearly 2 million Iraqi refugees in Syria and Lebanon, according to administration and congressional sources, even as the United Nations has told donors that it may scale back its assistance to the effort because of insufficient funds.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees -- whose programs for Iraqi refugees and displaced people are projected to cost over $800 million this year, according to the State Department -- informed a meeting of donor nations last week that it may need to slash support for Iraqis in Syria and Jordan because the agency has received only 60 percent of the funds it needs to help Iraqi refugees the rest of this year.

Last month, State Department officials told Congress that many countries have held back funds for refugees because the Iraqi government has delivered only $15 million to Syria, where there are about 1 million refugees, and $2 million to Lebanon, where there are 200,000; and it has pledged $8 million to Jordan, where there are some 500,000. Ambassador James B. Foley, the State Department coordinator for Iraq refugees, said at the time that the United States would press the Maliki government to increase its support.

"They are going to have to find a way to say yes," said a senior State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. The official added that Ryan C. Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, is providing the Iraqi government with data on the types of assistance needed. "We by no means consider this over," the official said. "We are determined to get a yes, and high-level discussions continue." (Washington Post)

Labels: Iraq, Jordan, Refugees, Syria, U.N., U.S.

Pirates are suspected of seizing a Jordanian-flagged vessel off the coast of Somalia after authorities lost contact with it, Jordan's transport minister has said.

"Contact with the Victoria, a Jordan-flagged boat, was lost at 8:00 am (0500 GMT) Saturday," Jordan's state-run Petra news agency quoted Alaa Batayneh as saying.

"It is believed that the vessel has been hijacked," he said, adding that the vessel was 35 nautical miles off the Somali coast when contact was lost.

The ship is owned by an Emirati company and was carrying 4,200 tonnes of sugar donated by Denmark to Somalia, Batyaneh said.

"The ministries of transport and foreign affairs are co-ordinating with the concerned parties to secure the release of the boat and its crew," he said.

The crew includes Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis and Tanzanians, the transport minister said.

Andrew Mwangura from the Kenyan branch of the Seafarer's Assistance Programme said pirates had taken control of the ship and were sailing it northwards. (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Jordan

A court in Jordan has sentenced a 23-year-old man to 10 years in jail for killing his sister.

The man was initially sentenced to death, but this was commuted to give him the chance to repent.

The court heard that he stabbed his sister 14 times and shot her repeatedly after her former husband accused her of having affairs.

Jordanians convicted of so called "honour killings" have previously been jailed for as little as six months.

Correspondents say the 10-year sentence underlines the authorities' determination to stamp out the crime.

Amnesty International says that last year 17 women were officially recorded as having been killed in "honour crimes" in Jordan. (BBC)

Labels: Jordan, Womens Rights

Representatives of seven Arab states are currently meeting to discuss how to enhance nuclear cooperation in order to set up peaceful atomic programs, according to news reports.

Experts from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen are participating in the meeting.

The delegates are discussing mechanisms for cooperation among various Arab countries for peaceful nuclear projects.

Several Arab countries have expressed their desire to set up nuclear programs with the stated aim of using nuclear energy for generating electricity, desalinating water and using the facilities for research.

However, there are concerns that these programs will be used for manufacturing nuclear weapons.

The specter of a nuclear Iran is a notion that does not sit well with Arab countries in the Middle East and it is most likely that fears of a nuclear-armed Iran are behind recent moves in these countries towards setting up nuclear programs of their own. (Media Line)

Labels: Iraq, Jordan, Nuclear Power, Saudi Arabia, Syria, U.A.E., Yemen

Arab countries are mulling an emergency fund to help counter a global surge in food prices, Jordan's Agriculture Minister was quoted as saying on Monday.
Protests, strikes and riots have erupted in developing countries around the world after prices of wheat, rice, corn, oils and other essential foods rose more than 40 percent in the past year.

The World Food Program has described soaring food prices as a "silent tsunami" that threatens to plunge more than 100 million people into poverty.
"There is an intention to set up an emergency fund to support Arab countries that suffer from the rise in prices of food products," Jordan's state news agency Petra quoted Muzahim Muhaisin as saying.
Arab agriculture ministers met last week in the Saudi capital Riyadh for a meeting of the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development but little emerged about plans to confront the surge in global food prices.
Muhaisin did not elaborate on the plan, saying only it would seek to boost concerted action to tap "competitive advantages" offered in Arab countries. (Haaretz)

Labels: Food, Jordan

Jordan's King Abdullah told visiting MK Yossi Beilin on Saturday that progress in peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians prior to the two sides reaching an agreement on the core issues of the conflict would be sufficient for the Arab League states to implement, at least partially, the 2002 Arab peace initiative, Israel Radio reported on Saturday.
The monarch added his belief that a significant number of Arab and Muslim states would move to establish diplomatic relations with Israel as a result of positive movement on the Palestinian front.
Beilin told Abdullah that the gaps between the two sides are smaller than what is perceived by the public, yet the question remains whether Israel and the Palestinians can muster the courage to make the necessary compromises and bridge those gaps, according to Israel Radio.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this weekend makes her fourth visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories since the November Annapolis peace conference with little to show for the U.S. effort.
Traveling ahead of President George W. Bush's May 13-18 trip to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Rice left Washington on Thursday and will see officials on both sides - including in three-way sessions - to assess a peace negotiation with no visible sign of progress. (Haaretz)

Labels: Arab Leauge, Israel, Jordan, U.S.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas underwent an unannounced heart test at a Jordanian hospital Thursday, adding new uncertainty to already troubled Middle East peace talks.

Aides to Abbas, 73, said he was doing well after a catheterization procedure they described as successful, and that he was expected to leave Jordan Hospital later in the day. Abbas is due to return to the West Bank on Friday and is expected to return to work immediately after his arrival, they said.

In the Gaza Strip on Thursday, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a group of Hamas militants, killing a gunman involved in the capture of an Israeli soldier two years ago, the Israeli military said. The death threatened to cloud Egyptian-led efforts to broker a truce in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

In a separate incident, Palestinian medical officials said a 62-year-old civilian was killed and three militants wounded by Israeli fire during fighting near the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. The military said there had been exchanges of fire in the area but could not immediately give further details.

In Amman, Abbas' physician, Dr. Abdullah al-Bashir, said he performed an angiogram as part of an annual medical checkup that also included blood tests. (AP)

Labels: Jordan, Palestine

A Jordanian man was sentenced to six months in prison on Wednesday for murdering his 16-year-old daughter by electrocution in an apparent "honor killing," a court source said. "In November 2006, the man lost consciousness after his daughter told him that she had slept with a young man. She also cursed him and said it was none of his business," the source told AFP. "When the enraged man woke up, he beat the girl on the head with a stick and electrocuted her by attaching bare electric wires to her body. She died immediately." The father committed the crime in the exclusive Abdoun area, west of Amman, and was charged with murder after he confessed to murdering his daughter "to cleanse the family's honor," the source said. Jordanian authorities recorded a total of 17 so-called  traditional "honor killings" in 2007, a slight increase compared to  previous years. The killers often receive light sentences if convicted, as Parliament has refused to reform the penal code to end the near  impunity of the perpetrators. (AFP)

Labels: Jordan, Womens Rights

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert held talks in Jordan on Wednesday with Jordanian King Abdullah on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Olmert's bureau said in a statement.

"The two leaders discussed the peace process and ways to make progress towards the objectives set at the Annapolis conference," the statement said about the visit, which was not announced in advance.

The U.S.-hosted conference in Annapolis, Maryland last November relaunched Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations that have shown little visible sign of progress.

The United States hopes both sides can reach a Palestinian statehood deal before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office in January. (Reuters)

Labels: Israel, Jordan, Palestine

Jordan's Islamist opposition on Monday demanded the government ban torture and protect prisoners' rights, a week after rioting at a jail near the capital led to the deaths of three inmates. "The government should reform its prison policies in order to protect the rights of prisoners and ban beatings and torture," the influential Islamic Action Front (IAF) said in a statement. "The authorities should find civilized ways, including dialogue, to deal with the prisoners and their problems," said the party, which has six seats in the 100-member lower house of Parliament.

Three inmates at the Muaqqar jail died in clashes with policemen last Monday after prisoners rioted and set fire to their cells in what police said was a protest at being segregated from other convicts. But the National Center for Human Rights said after visiting the facility that mistreatment and severe beatings of inmates by some policemen were the cause of the riots. In August last year, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said Jordanian prisoners were subjected to widespread serious abuses, including "illegal beatings that sometimes turn into torture ... Guards hit prisoners with electrical cables and truncheons, and hang them in iron cuffs for hours on end." The IAF also called for an independent inquiry into the riots. (AFP)

Labels: Jordan, Torture

Former US President Jimmy Carter briefed Jordan's King Abdullah II on Sunday about Palestinian-Israeli peace moves and his meetings with the militant group Hamas, a Royal Palace official said. During the discussion, Abdullah focused his attention on US-backed talks between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, rather than on any of Carter's dealings with Hamas, with which Jordan has frosty relations, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Jordan has accused Hamas of stockpiling and concealing weapons in the kingdom with the aim of using them to destabilize the pro-Western government.

Carter met with senior Hamas leaders Friday and Saturday in Syria, defying US and Israeli warnings that doing so would lend legitimacy to the group.

Hamas officials said they talked with Carter about an internationally backed Israeli embargo on Gaza and a possible Israel-Hamas prisoner swap. But Hamas did not respond to Carter's requests that it halt rocket fire on Israeli border towns and agree to talk to Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishak about a prisoner exchange. (Daily Star)

Labels: Hamas, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, U.S.

Twenty-three of Jordan's 37 political parties have been dissolved for failing to meet the requirements of a controversial new law, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday. Twelve already established parties, including the influential Islamic Action Front (IAF), have been reapproved in line with the 2007 law which raised the required number of founding members for each party from 50 to at least 500 from five different provinces. Two other new parties have been licensed under the law, which puts political activity under Interior Ministry supervision. "All parties that have not rectified their legal status in accordance with the law are considered dissolved," a ministry statement said. Opposition parties including the IAF, the political arm of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, have slammed the law. "We reject the ... law, which dangerously threatens political life and democratization and puts political parties under the mercy of security departments," they said in a joint statement. (AFP)

Labels: Jordan

Inmates at a prison north of the Jordanian capital Amman set fire to their cells, a day after three rioting prisoners at another jail died during clashes with security forces.
The riots began after wardens tried to segregate the prisoners according to the crime they had committed, in line with new regulations.

"A number of prisoners convicted of murder and robbery inflicted injuries on themselves and set fire to their cells this morning at Suwaqa prison," Mohammed Khatib, police spokesman, said in a statement on Tuesday.

"They were showing solidarity with inmates who rioted on Monday at al- Muwaqar prison, but police tackled the situation and evacuated the inmates from the cells for their own safety."
Abu Musleh, an inmate, told Al Jazeera in a telephone interview that the prisoners had not started the "rebellion" at the Suwaqa facility.
In March 2006, inmates at the jail, as well as the Juweideh prison south of Amman, rioted over conditions.

An official said the three killed in al-Muwaqar prison died from inhaling smoke after rioters set fire to mattresses. Dozens of wounded inmates were transferred to government hospitals. (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Jordan

Scores of inmates have rioted in a Jordanian prison, protesting against a move by the authorities to segregate al-Qaeda-linked detainees.

At least three people died in the unrest on Monday at al-Muaqar prison during three hours of clashes with wardens, police said.

Al Jazeera's Hasan al-Shobaki reported that 30 people were injured.

Human rights sources said the uprising started over the isolation of prisoners and the method of categorising inmates.

An official said the inmates died from smoke inhalation after rioters set fire to mattresses. Dozens of wounded inmates were transferred to government hospitals. (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Jordan

The Jordanian government has signed a five-billion-dollar deal with a United Arab Emirates firm to develop the kingdom's sole Red Sea port of Aqaba, the local press reported on Sunday.

"The three-phase project will cost five billion dollars, create around 15,000 jobs and boost tourism in Aqaba," Hosni Abu Ghida, president of the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA), told the state-run Petra news agency.

Under the project, expected to be completed after five years, the UAE's Al-Maabar real estate company will relocate Aqaba's port facilities to the southern part of the city and expand them, Petra reported.

ASEZA was established in 2003 as a low-tax economic zone as a way of attracting business to the port.

"Such investments will develop tourism in Aqaba and enhance economic development," said Salah al-Kilani, who heads ASEZA's investment and economic development arm. (AFP)

Labels: Jordan

On a recent trip to Amman, Jordan, during a visit to the home of someone who had been detained by the Jordanian intelligence service in 2002, I was given two very thin strips of paper covered with Arabic writing and marked with a thumbprint. Curled up into a tight spiral, they were no bigger than the cap of a pen.

My contact, who had smuggled the papers out of intelligence detention a few years previously, told me that the message therein had been written by a prisoner who had been detained with him. He said it gave a detailed account of that person's experiences.

That evening, in my hotel room, an Egyptian colleague translated the text, word for word. Stunned by its contents, I transcribed the message into electronic form and sent it into cyberspace for safekeeping.

The message's author was a Yemeni terrorism suspect named Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi, who was arrested in Pakistan in February 2002. Though the message was undated, it was clear from the narrative that it had been written in October 2002.  (Salon)

Labels: Jordan, Torture, U.S.

[Amman] Jordan is this year facing a severe drought, the likes of which it has not witnessed in decades. The government is scrambling to find means of coping by reducing supplies to households and spearheading a nationwide campaign to encourage rationing.

Rivers and lakes are a rare commodity in this desert kingdom, with most of the water supply coming from dams that collect water during the rainy winter season or from springs that have been siphoning off the kingdom's underground reserves.

A disappointing rainy season has left most of the country's dams half empty. Precipitation registered during the rainy season constituted only 57 percent of the long-term annual average of 8.3 billion cubic meters.

The poor rainfall has forced officials at the water authorities to cut the quantities of water pumped to farmers in the north and western regions. The available amount for irrigation is 130 million cubic meters (mcm), while actual needs are estimated at 180 mcm.

The desert kingdom shares the spoils of the Yarmouk and Jordan rivers with its powerful neighbors, Syria and Israel respectively. (JPost)

Labels: Jordan, Water

A Jordanian man described by Britain as a "significant international terrorist" won a court appeal on Wednesday against deportation.

Abu Qatada, linked by Britain to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, is one of a group of Middle Eastern men the government has been attempting to deport on grounds of national security, while acknowledging it does not have sufficient evidence to put them on trial.

The Court of Appeal also upheld the cases of two Libyan men against deportation. The rulings are a setback to British efforts to deport suspected Islamist militants to nations where human rights groups argue they would be at risk of torture. (Reuters)

Labels: Al Qaeda, Jordan, U.K.

The CIA secretly transported at least 14 "war on terror" detainees to Jordan between 2001 and 2004, making it the top "rendition" destination at that time, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday. "While a handful of countries received persons rendered by the US during this period, no other country is believed to have held as many as Jordan," the rights group said in a statement.

The prisoners were interrogated and tortured by Jordan's General Intelligence Department (GID), according to a new HRW report that documents eight previously unknown cases of rendition. GID officials who met with Human Rights Watch in Amman in 2007 denied receiving CIA prisoners and denied using torture. The group said the denials were unconvincing "given the weight of credible evidence showing otherwise."

The report is "based largely on firsthand information from Jordanian former prisoners who were detained with the non-Jordanian terrorism suspects," it said.

"We've documented more than a dozen cases in which prisoners were sent to Jordan for torture," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at HRW. (AFP)

Labels: Human Rights Watch, Jordan, Torture, U.S.

About 7,000 United Nations employees staged a strike in Jordan on Monday, demanding pay raises to meet a 50-percent spike in food and fuel prices in the kingdom and high inflation across the Middle East.

The one-day protest forced the closure of 177 schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which serve more than 120,000 Palestinian boys and girls under the age of 14. UNRWA's 24 clinics across the country were run by skeleton staff.

"The strike certainly disrupted UNRWA's services in Jordan today," said UNRWA's Jordan spokesman Matar Saqer.

UNRWA - which was created after the first Arab-Israeli war over the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 - provides Palestinian refugees with basic and vocational education, primary health care and relief and social services.

It now cares for 4.4 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants living in camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Of the total refugees, Jordan hosts the largest number - 1.8 million Palestinians - displaced in two wars with Israel since 1948. (JPost)

Labels: Jordan, Palestine, Refugees, U.N.

American military bases in Iraq have turned the United States into a "neighbor," Jordan's Prince Hassan says. "The US military bases and the presence of around 150,000 American soldiers in Iraq have made the United States one of the neighboring states in the region," he told a seminar on "Armament and Security in the Middle East" on Tuesday, his office said on Wednesday. "American military bases remain in Germany and Japan 60 years after the end of World War II," the former crown prince and uncle of King Abdullah II noted at the two-day seminar in Amman. He said he does not expect US troops to withdraw from Iraq "in the coming years." (AFP)

Labels: Jordan, U.S.

Jordan's media savvy Queen Rania has launched a
YouTube channel calling on young people to engage in a global dialogue to dismantle stereotypes of Muslims and the Arab world, according to a press statement Monday from the Royal Palace.

Rania has vowed to work to break down such preconceptions and has said she wants people to "know the real Arab world ... unedited, unscripted and unfiltered."

The YouTube channel invites viewers to give their opinions of the Middle East and talk about stereotyped images they may have of Arabs and Muslims.

In the Palace statement, Rania was quoted as saying that she wanted the young world over "to see the personal side of my region, to know the places and faces and rituals and culture that shape the part of the world I call home." (AP)

Labels: Jordan

Police on Monday said they had charged a Jordanian with premeditated murder after his 23-year-old sister and her boyfriend were shot dead in an apparent new "honor killing." "The suspect shot his sister four times and her Syrian shepherd boyfriend six times when he caught them red-handed early on Sunday" in the eastern Shumari natural reserve near the desert city of Azraq, a spokesman said. "He turned himself in shortly after the crime, and forensic tests proved that his sister was still a virgin when she was murdered." The spokesman said two of the suspect's cousins had been charged as accessories to the crime, the third such killing this year. Jordanian authorities recorded a total of 17 so-called honor killings in 2007, slightly up on previous years. The killers often receive light sentences if convicted, as Parliament has twice refused to reform the penal code despite pressure from human rights groups to end the near-impunity of the perpetrators. (Link)

Labels: Jordan

Eight people have been arrested in Jordan for propagating the Christian faith, according to a Saudi newspaper.

Jordanian security forces arrested eight people, mostly foreigners, after they were caught distributing missionary material to Bedouin families north and east of the Jordanian capital, Amman, the Saudi daily Al-Watan reported.

The authorities received information about the missionaries from local residents who said these foreigners were offering humanitarian assistance to poor Muslim families and distributing fliers promoting Christianity.

Sources said they were "enticing" impoverished youngsters by paying them money and calling on them to marry foreign girls. (Link)

Labels: Jordan