Jordan agrees to swap death-row terrorist for Isis-held pilot

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/28/jordan-agrees-swap-death-row-terrorist-isis-pilot

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Jordan has accepted a key demand of Islamic State (Isis) militants holding a Japanese journalist by agreeing to release a militant in a proposed prisoner swap.

However, as the militant, failed suicide bomber Sajida al-Rishawi, was moved from death row, there was confusion over whether the terror group was preparing to hand over the journalist, Kenji Goto, or another captive – a Jordanian pilot shot down over Syria late last year.

A government spokesman said Jordan had agreed to free Rishawi, whose suicide vest failed to detonate during a triple hotel bombing in Amman in November 2005, if the pilot, Muadh al-Kasasbeh, was released.

Japan is instead expecting Goto to be traded for Rishawi. There is no confirmation that Kasasbeh is included in the deal.

“Jordan is ready to release prisoner Sajida al-Rishawi if the Jordanian pilot lieutenant Muadh al-Kasasbeh [is] released and his life spared,” spokesman Mohammad al-Momani was quoted on Jordanian state television as saying. He did not make any reference to Goto.

On Tuesday, Isis militants said the hostages had 24 hours to live unless Rishawi was released.

Rishawi, 44, was sentenced to death after being convicted for her part in an al-Qaida attack on a string of hotels in Amman in 2005 that killed 60 people. The attack was a seminal moment in the arc of Isis – it led directly to one of its biggest setbacks, the killing of the then-head of the Islamic State of Iraq, an earlier incarnation of the terror group that now controls much of eastern Syria and western Iraq.

Rishawi was captured after one of three explosions in central Amman on 9 November 2005, which were ordered by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Her husband, Ali Hussein al-Shamari, detonated his bomb in the Radisson SAS hotel, but Reshawi’s bomb was faulty.

Riled Jordanian intelligence officials then launched a concerted effort to find Zarqawi, who was nearing the peak of his powers in Iraq, where a Sunni insurgency he was driving had taken hold.

Zarqawi’s hideout was found seven months later after a source cultivated by the Jordanians pinpointed his location. He was killed by a bomb dropped from a US air force jet in June 2006 in the town of Hibhib, 40 miles north of Baghdad.

Reshawi was moved from her prison cell hours after Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, condemned as “despicable” the release of the video purporting to show Goto, accompanied by a warning that he and Kasasbeh had hours to live unless Rishawi was released.

Three days earlier, Goto was heard in another audio clip announcing that his friend Haruna Yukawa, 42, had been beheaded after Isis’s 72-hour deadline for Japan to make a $200m (£132m) payment expired.

Related: Jordan shows that negotiating with terrorists can reap rewards

The new 1m 50s clip is accompanied by a photo of Goto holding what appears to be a Photoshopped image of Kasasbeh, whom Isis have been holding since his aircraft crashed during a US-led bombing raid over the city of Raqaa in late December.

The man in the clip says: “She [Rishawi] has been a prisoner for a decade and I’ve only been a prisoner for a few months. Her for me, a straight exchange.”

Abe said: “This was an extremely despicable act and we feel strong indignation. We strongly condemn that.

“While this is a tough situation, we remain unchanged in our stance of seeking help from the Jordanian government in securing the early release of Mr Goto.”

Isis had previously demanded cash ransoms for all foreign hostages it had seized since late 2012. The decision to instead demand a prisoner swap for Goto is being seen by some close to the organisation as a symbolic bid to retrieve something from the Amman attack, which is widely considered among senior members to have been a serious mistake.