03-Nov-19: In Washington, a step towards bringing the Sbarro bomber to justice

We posted this meme in August 2019. Tamimi’s Instagram account was closed closed down by Instagram shortly afterwards.

We have just unexpectedly seen a small, modestly encouraging development in our efforts to bring to justice the Hamas savage who bombed a Jerusalem pizzeria filled with children.

First, a little background.

Our fifteen year old daughter Malki was one of many children killed in the bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem whose deaths were sadistically celebrated as a triumph in parts of the Arab world.

Over the years since the massacre, one of the hardest things for us to accept as bereaved parents has been the deplorable ongoing role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in all this. And the minor, essentially invisible, outrage it has aroused among people we think ought to be seriously enraged. This is not about politics after all but justice.

Ahlam Tamimi, a Jordanian woman who says she was Hamas’ first female terrorist and who masterminded the bombing, has publicly confessed – on camera, for the record, multiple times – to the role she played. She has proudly called it “my operation“ and has said she has no regrets about what she did.

Describing the shared-taxi ride that got her out of Jerusalem minutes after the explosion, she cheerfully shared the mood:

They said on the radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I just couldn’t. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding. They didn’t even know that I was among them… We passed a Palestinian police checkpoint, and the policemen were laughing. One of them stuck his head in and said: ‘Congratulations to us all.’ Everybody was happy. [Source: MEMRI]

Her satanic handiwork in fact left behind 16 destroyed lives. Dozens more victims were horribly maimed but survived.

Tamimi, born in Jordan in 1980 to a Jordanian family, lived in Jordan until she started college studies at Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah in the area today controlled by the Palestinian Authority. That school’s Arabic-language Wikipedia page names her as one of its notable alumnae along with numerous other terrorists. The much more widely-read English-language version leaves her and the other jihadists out.

Tamimi returned to Jordan after Israel conditionally commuted her sentence (to time served) in the extortionate 2011 transaction known as the Shalit Deal in which a sole Israeli hostage was freed by the terrorists of Hamas in exchange for 1,027 imprisoned terrorists [“19-Oct-11: Haaretz: Shalit prisoner swap marks ‘colossal failure’ for mother of Israeli bombing victim“]. Tamimi, serving 16 consecutive life sentences, was one of them.

Now married [“22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it“] and a mother, she continues to live there today, free as a bird. It’s in every sense a dream life.

It should never have turned out that way. A US Federal criminal complaint (roughly the same as an indictment) issued in 2013 but kept secret and under unseal until March 2017 [“14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and extradition is sought“] makes her a fugitive from US law.

There’s a substantial State Department reward on her head [“31-Jan-18: There’s now a $5 million reward for bringing the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to justice“]. There’s also an unsatisfied US request to its ally the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to extradite her under their 1995 treaty [“21-Mar-17: Tamimi extradition: When it’s claimed that something is illegal in Jordan…“]

Determined to see her face justice, we have written often and bitterly about Jordan’s brazen flaunting of its treaty with the US. It is clear to us and to better-informed commentators (this 2017 journal article from National Security Law Brief is a good example) that Jordan’s claims that the 1995 extradition treaty with the US is unconstitutional are baseless.

Jordan in fact asserts the treaty has never had any legal effect since the day it was signed. But in reality, the kingdom has extradited to the US every time it was asked to do so. Right up until the Tamimi case.

Note that neither the Jordanian government nor any of its diplomats, senior politicians or royal family members has claimed Jordan’s constitution keeps Tamimi safe from extradition. That role has been played exclusively by the judges of its Court of Cassation, in effect the supreme court of the kingdom. Everyone else in Jordan’s power system has stayed utterly silent. And no reporter, as far as we know, has ever pressed Jordan’s authorities to explain.

Parallel to that, there has been a striking absence of public statements on the matter by US government sources. At the same time, we have watched, infuriated and offended, the steady parade of US officials visiting Amman and King Abdullah’s palace and the frequent return visits by the king and his entourage to the US Congress, to the White House, to the welcoming US media. All of this with no mention of how Jordan demeans its treaty with the US.

No US government official has said what we think ought to be said: that Jordan disclaiming responsibility for extraditing the confessed bomber and mass murderer of children – and harboring her – is wrong and offensive. That it conflicts with Jordan’s bilateral obligations. That the US, which provides lavish financial, military and other support to the Hashemite Kingdom, won’t stand for the rank injustice they have gotten away with.

Nothing. Till now.

What’s just happpened? Starting in 1985, and in accordance with Title 22, Section 2656(f) of the United States Code, the US Secretary of State has been required to submit to Congress an annual report on global terrorism and the multi-lateral efforts to defeat it. Since 2005, those have been published under the title “Country Report on Terrorism“. Jordan is always listed.

Last year’s report [here] introduces Jordan (at page 138) in the customary way:

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2017. 

Tamimi

Then for the first time it mentions Jordan thwarting the Tamimi extradition efforts:

A U.S. criminal complaint was unsealed in March charging Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the United States resulting in death. The charge is related to her participation in an August 9, 2001, suicide bomb attack at a restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Also unsealed was a warrant for Al-Tamimi’s arrest and an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant. Jordan’s courts have ruled that their constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals.

And that’s it. Evidently there’s nothing more to say.

To us, it’s a disturbingly odd account. While it airs Jordan’s anti-extradition viewpoint, it says nothing about what the US believes. It cannot be, we have said to ourselves, that the US lacks a view about this scandal. That it has nothing at all to say to the Congress. Something’s wrong. What are they hiding and why?

The 2018 edition came out yesterday [here]. It adopts essentially identical language to the paragraph above. But then at page 135 it adds this new conclusion:

In 2018, Jordan continued to cite a court ruling that its constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals. The United States regards the extradition treaty as valid.

And there it is.

For the first time ever, a public statement by the US government clarifying, as we keep saying: that when Jordan denies it has any obligation to extradite our child’s killer, that’s wrong and unacceptable to the United States.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi with her Jordanian hosts in Amman two weeks ago [Image Source]

Two weeks ago [“19-Oct-19: House Speaker Pelosi led an official visit today to the chief protector of our child’s killer“], nine members of the US Congress, eight of them Democrats – and all of them chairs or senior members of House of Representatives committees – made a flying visit to Amman, Jordan’s capital.

Their names: Ranking Member Mac Thornberry, House Armed Services Committee; Chairman Eliot Engel, House Foreign Affairs Committee; Chairman Bennie Thompson, Homeland Security Committee; Chairman Adam Schiff, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Congressman Ron Kind, House Ways and Means Committee; Congresswoman Susan Davis, House Armed Services Committee; Congressman Stephen Lynch, Chairman, House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on National Security; Congresswoman Elaine Luria, House Armed Services Committee; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

(But no one from the House Judiciary Committee. That’s relevant because of what’s in this recent news report: “Parents of US Girl Killed in 2001 Jerusalem Bombing Call for Congressional Investigation Into Fugitive Hamas Terrorist Living Freely in Jordan” [Ben Cohen in Algemeiner, July 17, 2019])

If we had known about it in advance, we would have asked them to challenge their host’s disregard of a quarter-century old cornerstone agreement solemnly entered into by his revered father, King Hussein. They could have reminded him that annual aid to Jordan has nearly quadrupled in historical terms over the last 15 years. An authoritative source [Congressional Research Service, April 2019] says it stood in total (as at the end of Fiscal Year 2017) at roughly $20.4 billion.

But since their visit was unpublicized ahead of time, we did two things after the publicity started emerging:

• One – we messaged each of the Congress people and asked them to engage with us. How many people, seeking justice for a murdered loved one, a child, a US citizen who never reached her sixteenth birthday, do these representatives ever hear from? Every one of these elected officials has a well-staffed office. Not one of them responded to us or acknowledged our questions in any way.
• Two – we asked the State Department if the delegation members were briefed ahead of their Jordan visit, thinking that since there’s so little media coverage of the Tamimi case, they could do with some help. We received a polite response. It says the Congress people did indeed get a briefing but declined to say what matters the briefing covered – only that it “included a number of topics related to the bilateral relationship.”