Jordan releases Zarqawi 'mentor'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/7292691.stm

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Jordan has freed a man said to be the mentor of the late head of al-Qaeda in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi after holding him for three years without trial.

No reason was given for the release of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi.

He was arrested in 2005 after giving television interviews urging resistance to US forces in Iraq.

He had already been acquitted of involvement in a plot to attack air bases. Human-rights groups had called for him to be tried or released.

Mr al-Maqdisi served several years in prison with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the 1990s, and is believed to have schooled him in radical Islamic ideology.

Both were freed in an amnesty.

Zarqawi later went to Afghanistan then Iraq. He was killed by American forces in Iraq two years ago.