AMMAN Ñ Jordan has captured two suspects in
the assassination of a U.S. diplomat.
Jordanian officials identified the suspects as nationals from Jordan and
Libya. They said both are members of Al Qaida and were trained in
Afghanistan, Middle East Newsline reported.
The members were said to have received $18,000 for the Oct. 28
assassination of Laurence Foley, the 60-year-old head of U.S. Agency for
International Development in Jordan. Foley was the first U.S. diplomat
killed in the Hashemite kingdom.
Information Minister Mohammed Adwan said Libyan national Salem Saad Bin
Suweid and Jordanian Yasser Fatih Ibrahim confessed to membership in Al
Qaida. He said Bin Suweid entered Jordan on a forged Tunisian passport.
A government statement said the two suspects confessed to being linked
to Al Qaida's Ahmed Kalaylah, accused of having supplied the weapons and
money to attack embassies and foreign diplomats in Jordan. Kalaylah,
believed to be in Syria, was said to have been appointed a leading Al Qaida
operative in attacks on Europe.
Last week, CIA director George Tenet said the United States has brought
70 Islamic insurgents to justice. He said about half of the suspects,
including the senior Al Qaida operatives, were captured in recent months.
They included the operations chief of Al Qaida in the Persian Gulf region.
"Jordan and Egypt have been courageous leaders in the war on terrorism,"
Tenet said in a speech to the Washington-based Nixon Center on Dec. 11. "A
number of Gulf states like the UAE are denying terrorists financial safe
haven, making it harder for Al Qaida to funnel funding for operations, and
others in the Gulf are beginning to tackle the problem of charities fronting
for, and funding, terrorists. The Saudis are providing increasingly
important support to our counterterrorism efforts Ñ from making arrests to
sharing debriefing results."
On Dec. 14, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration
has prepared a hit list of at least 24 people deemed as terrorists. The
newspaper said President George Bush relayed authority to the CIA to track
and kill those on the list without additional approval.