March 28, 2024

Please follow & like us :)

Twitter
Facebook
RSS

19-Jun-20: Aljazeera on the Tamimi extradition: Our commentary

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/jNPo/~3/eo7d3XpN6FY/19-jun-20-aljazeera-on-tamimi.html
Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizzeria, minutes after the bombing led by Tamimi

It’s an intense time for us on multiple fronts. We’ve been doing a lot of tweeting and ZOOMing and Whatsapping. But somehow not much – and not enough – blogging. Time to do some catching up.

Over at Aljazeera, an English-language piece, “‘Close the file’: Jordan king urged to deny US extradition demand” by Ali Younes takes an inevitably sympathetic look at the efforts currently being made by a fugitive terrorist, Ahlam Tamimi, to stop certain pesky efforts by US law enforcement to call her to account. And put her in a US Federal prison for a very long time.
To the writer’s credit, he offered Arnold Roth an opportunity to be heard on an issue that, it goes without saying, is at the very heart of our deepest concerns. In the end, and we’ll get to this below, the article deals far more with viewpoints that we don’t like and think are lacking in accuracy and logic than with ours.
Quote:  Al-Tamimi – a Jordanian citizen who was convicted in Israel and sentenced to multiple life sentences after 15 people, including two Israeli-Americans, were killed in the blast – was released to Jordan in a prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel in 2011.
Comment: The “multiple” in that sentence is 16. Sixteen. One for each of her victims. Think back to the last time you heard of a sentence anywhere as large as that. The “including two Israeli-Americans” isn’t right. Two of the murdered were females with American citizenship: our daughter Malki who was 15 and had lived here in Jerusalem since she was two years old. And Shoshana Hayman Greenbaum who was a beloved school teacher in New Jersey, her parents’ only child, and pregnant for the first time. She wasn’t an Israeli-American but simply an American who was visiting.
Quote: Her family acknowledged that Jordan was under pressure by the US government to extradite her, but urged the king to work to “close the file” and “reject the US demands that are based on political considerations, not legal ones”.
Comment: Under pressure? The US has been asking Jordan since 2013, seven years ago, to apprehend her and make her available to US law enforcement pursuant to a 1995 Extradition Treaty signed by the Jordanian king’s father and the US government of William J. Clinton. Are the US demands based on political considerations? Tamimi admits she placed the bomb in the pizzeria and boasts about it and about the children she blew to pieces. Tamimi herself doesn’t claim there were political considerations in the atrocity she calls “my operation.  She tells it plainly here: “08-Oct-17: Why kill religious Jewish children? Because, says Hamas celebrity-jihadist, this is a religious struggle“. She sees herself as a holy warrior. The US sees her as a fugitive terrorist.
Quote: Seven members of the US Congress sent a letter to the Jordanian embassy in Washington DC last May demanding that Jordan “hand over” al-Tamimi to the US government.
Comment: Actually, no. The letter sent by Reps. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) who took the lead; Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.); Ted Yoho (R-Fla.); Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.); Brian Mast (R-Fla.); Scott Perry (R-Penn.); and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) to Jordan’s ambassador in Washington is reproduced here [“05-May-20: From Congress, concern about how Jordanians deal with the fugitive terrorist in their midst“] and reproduced as a PDF here. The words “hand over” don’t appear. The lawmkers refer to the treaty and those US requests that started in 2013 and then say
The Hashemite Kingdom refused. It continues to refuse until today. This is a matter of grave and growing concern to the Congress and to all Americans. 
Here’s their “demand”: 
We believe it is of the highest importance to US/Jordan relations that an outcome is found that honors Jordanian law while ensuring this unrepentant terrorist and murderer of innocent Americans is brought to US justice. Extraditing Tamimi within the framework of a long-standing, effective treaty is a powerful statement that Jordan will not tolerate terrorism nor its promotion. We reaffirm our appreciation for His Majesty King Abdullah II and his inspirational leadership and look forward to the further flourishing of our mutually important alliance.

Some demand.
Quote: Jordan’s highest court ruled in 2017 that al-Tamimi cannot be extradited to the United States because a 1995 extradition treaty signed between the two countries was not ratified by Jordan’s Parliament, making it unconstitutional for Jordanian courts to approve US requests.
Comment: True. A serious journalist might have then noted that (a) the US says the treaty is fully valid and always was; (b) the parliament could have ratified the treaty with their most importat ally every single day since June 1995 includig today but chose not to; (c) the Jordanians extradited fugitive terrorist to the US repeatedly right up until the Tamimi decison in March 2017. And if he had asked us, we would have told him what the State Department told us for the record: the government of Jordan provided instruments of ratification back in 1995 before the teaty went into effect.
Quote: Multiple US officials, however, told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, because they were not allowed to speak to the media, that Wooster’s statement [that the US would consider “all options” to press Jordan to extradite al-Tamimi, including leveraging US aid to Amman] did not veer from traditional diplomatic language used at the State Department, and did not indicate the US government will withhold US aid to Jordan.
Comment: The reporter could have added something about the “all options” terminology. Congress enacted a law that President Trump signed into effect on December 20, 2019 that provides a very meaningful sanction that while it doesn’t mention Jordan clearly targets it. The details are here.
Quote: Extraditing her to the United States is impossible from a Jordanian legal perspective, said Laith Nasrawin, a constitutional law professor at the University of Jordan. “The 1995 extradition treaty, having not been ratified by the parliament, does not carry the weight of the law and is invalid from the court’s perspective,” Nasrawin said. “The extradition treaty may carry weight on an international level between the US and Jordan, but domestically and legally, the treaty is unconstitutional.”
Comment: We don’t know Professor Nasrawin. We do however know more than most people about the legal claims being used about how Jordan cannot extradite Tamimi. None of the legal experts we have consulted thinks there’s any merit at all in Jordan’s position. As for the quote from Nasrawin, the way ot’s expressed in the article, we think it’s gibberish. Perhaps the reporter ought to be asked to clarify it. What does “invalid from the court’s perspective” mean? Is it invalid or just sort of? What’s more, the US lawmakers’ letter to Ambassador Kawar asks questions about many other current and valid Jordanian extradition treaties. If they get answered frankly, this whole charade will be over.
Quote: In 1995, Jordan extradited Eyad Ismail Najim, a Jordanian citizen implicated in the 1993 New York City bombing, immediately after the two countries signed the treaty. But Najim was extradited only after he signed documents agreeing to stand trial in the US, not because of a court ruling, according to Jordanian officials familiar with the case.
Comment: The 1995 treaty was signed because of the US insistence on bringing the 1993 World Trade Center bombing suspect to justice. The LA Times reported at the time: “U.S. intelligence has long known where to find Najim but the FBI was unable to request extradition until a treaty was worked out with Jordan in March, the sources said. The final instruments of extradition were completed and exchanged last Saturday, allowing the FBI to proceed. The indictment had been sealed to ensure that Najim would not learn that he had been identified and try to flee again.” The notion that he consented to being convicted in the US is a joke.
Quote: In an interview with Al Jazeera in 2017, Ahlam al-Tamimi said she never knew American nationals were killed in the bombing and the Israeli government never mentioned that during her trial. “The first time I ever knew that Americans were killed was when the Interpol in Jordan told me about the charges filed in the US against me,” she said.
Comment: What Ahlam Tamimi says she knew about her victims and their citizenship has zero consequence. It interests no one.
Quote:  The article quotes me saying this: “None of the lawyers with whom I have discussed it thinks the Jordanian claim has any real basis. Jordan has extradited terrorists to the US again and again … As the father of one of the children she targeted for murder, I don’t need much explaining by Jordanians about what makes extraditing Tamimi so different,” he said.
Comment: Arnold Roth said much more than that. We don’t complain about Younes quoting him briefly – that’s fine. Here’s the whole quotation:
Terrrorism charges were filed by US Federal prosecutors against the confessed Sbarro bomber, Ahlam Tamimi, a Jordanian, in 2013, years before we knew about their existence. 
They were kept sealed by law. Meaning no one, not even the US Congress, knew about them until they were announced four years later. 
But from my conversations with American law enforcement officials, I believe they were not an absolute secret. That’s because Jordanian government officials certainly knew about them. Multiple rounds of futile negotiations took place secretly between the US and its close strategic ally Jordan during those four years. The US goal was to get Tamimi extradited and brought into a Federal court to answer to the very serious charges that are still facing her.
And the Jordanian response was to keep her safe and in Amman.
Less than a week after the unsealing of those charges against Tamimi, Jordan’s Court of Cassation ruled for the first time that the King Hussein/Bill Clinton 1995 treaty was constitutionally invalid and she could not be handed over to the Americans. 
That area of law is not my personal field. But none of the lawyers with whom I have discussed it thinks the Jordanian claim has any real basis. Jordan has extradited terrorists to the US again and again. Tamimi is different. As the father of one of the children she targeted for murder, I don’t need much explaining by Jordanians about what makes extraditing Tamimi so different.
Jordan’s brazen refusal to comply with a treaty that undoubtedly was valid until Jordan decided it could not remain valid has gone on for years. The demand to see her handed over is not new. The $5M reward on her head is also not new.
As a technology entrepreneur, I have spent time in Jordan building commercial relations that would have benefitted both sides. I had friends there and enjoyed my visits. I will not be going there again. Today, like many others, I look on aghast at Jordan’s celebration of Tamimi as a figure of national admiration, as an inspiration to more and larger acts of terror, as a reason to deny justice and as a cause worth imperilling Jordan’s relations with the United States. It all amounts to a colossal lost opportunity for Jordan, for the US and even for Israel.
The Congress enacted a sanction targeting Jordan this past December. Like most rational people, I think it will be a terrible shame if that sanction has to be applied. But I believe in the logic of carefully applying sanctions in specific situations. The Tamimi case underscores how Jordan has lost its way. It needs to rediscover the role that justice plays in every decent society.
We look forward to seeing much more coverage of ongoing US efforts to bring Tamimi to justice in a Washington court on the Aljazeera site. 

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*