US is Pressuring Jordan to Extradite ex-Terror Convict but It Won't Happen, Analyst Says

Ahlam Tamimi served 10 years in an Israeli prison for assisting a suicide bomber in carrying out an attack that killed 15 people in Jerusalem and wonder over a hundred in August 2001. She was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit deal.

On August 9, 2001, a suicide bomber entered a packed Sbarro pizza joint in Jerusalem and detonated a bomb, killing 15 people, including two American nationals; 140 others were wounded.

Ahlam Tamimi, a Jordanian woman who assisted the terrorist by finding the place, guiding him there and teaching him how to detonate the explosive, escaped to safety. However, she was found several days later and faced trial in Israel.

An Israeli court found her guilty of plotting and assisting the assailant. She was handed 16 sequential life sentences. A decade later, however, she was freed following a swap deal between Hamas and Israel, where the latter agreed to release more than a thousand convicted terrorists, including Tamimi, in exchange for a captive Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

Once freed, Tamimi returned to Jordan. She was given a show on a TV channel and had started leading a normal life. But the families of the two Americans who were killed in the 2001 attack have never stopped demanding that their government put pressure on Jordan to extradite Tamimi and make her face trial in the US.

No Deal on the Horizon

In 1995, the US and Jordan signed an extradition agreement but it has never been ratified. Tamimi has never been given away to the American authorities. And Daoud Kuttab, an Amman-based political analyst, says this will never happen.

"You can’t punish a person twice for the same act. Tamimi was convicted and was pardoned [by the President of the State of Israel] as part of a prisoner deal. Period", he says.

However, Washington doesn't seem to have let go of the affair. In 2013, two years after her release, the FBI put Tamimi on its list of most wanted terrorists. From time to time, the US sends a request to the Jordanian authorities demanding her extradition. However, Amman is not budging.

Kuttab says it is because the FBI terror list is a political, not a legal tool, and "it is used by the pro-Israel lobby in the United States."

Cracks in Relations?

In Israel, reports have already alleged that the refusal of Jordan to hand out Tamimi are causing friction in relations between the US and its Middle Eastern ally. Under former President Donald Trump, the White House even mulled over the option to cut off its yearly assistance to the Hashemite Kingdom, which stands at $1.65 billion.

However, Kuttab is certain that the Tamimi affair will not crack the relations between the two states.

"There is no issue between Jordan and the US and it will not be an issue unless the US, Israel and the world change one of the basic pillars of the justice system," he said, adding that no matter what the price is, Amman will not crack under pressure and will not give away its citizen.