Five years ago today, a Jordanian court rejected a US request for the extradition to Washington of confessed bomber #AhlamTamimi, whose victims included US nationals. The 1995 extradition treaty was invalid, it ruled, since Jordan had not complied with its own laws in signing it.
2/ In reality, Jordan has extradition treaties with multiple countries that it respects. As for the US treaty, it respected that too between 1995 and 2017. The legal "flaw" could have been easily fixed and still can. Jordan's leaders clearly prefer it to be thought of as broken.
3/ Documents we obtained from the @StateDept via a FOIA suit in 2021 show that (unmentioned by the Jordanian court) the 1995 treaty was ratified by King Hussein, father of today's king.
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It's offensively absurd that Jordan, the world's second-largest recipient of US aid, dictates to the US how and to what extent US law will apply to certain terrorists if they are Jordanian. The obscene freedom of @FBIMostWanted Tamimi sends the worst possible message.
If you're tracking the dates, you'll know I slipped. Today, March 14, 2022, is the fifth anniversary of the US unsealing terror charges against #AhlamTamimi. The Jordanian court ruling, rejecting the validity of King Hussein's treaty with the US, came 6 days later. Sorry.
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Two US nationals were murdered in the bombing orchestrated by Jordan's #AhlamTamimi; a third is still unconscious. Tamimi calls the massacre "my operation". She's lionized for it.
Why has no US official ever demanded publicly that Jordan extradite Tamimi as the treaty requires?
Thanks to years of cynical protection by Jordan, confessed bomber #AhlamTamimi is a pan-Arab media celebrity. Clever interviewers and ethically-challenged hosts 'forget' to ask Jordan's king, a frequent visitor to Washington, how Jordan justifies disavowing the 1995 treaty.
@CNN's celebrity interviewer @FareedZakaria stands out for repeatedly hosting Jordan's king without once allowing Jordan's shameless harboring of @FBIMostWanted terrorist #Tamimi to spoil the fun. What would you say to him if it were your child who was one of #Tamimi's victims?
Days of remembrance and tribute are fine and commendable except when they come in place of action and become camouflage. Terrorism isn't a disease but a challenge to governments. My wife and I ask you, @StateDeptSpox@NedPrice, to engage with us. Enough with the mantras.
Since no one at your level in seniority in today's @StateDepartment or those of the Trump and Obama administrations has ever acknowledged our existence, Mr @StateDeptSpox, I want to take this opportunity to introduce you to our child's killer, a Jordanian celebrity.
And since your tweet states your position on the pursuit of justice, Frimet and I assure you we're as passionate about this as you. It's why I met with senior officials in Washington in March 2012. And why we have devoted ourselves since then to seeing Tamimi in a US court.
I have not yet met a member of Congress who views @FBIMostWanted#AhlamTamimi as worthy of being defended. She openly admits bombing the pizzeria where my child's life ended. She faces US terror charges but is kept out of @FBI hands by Jordan's govt. Jordan's king is in...
...Washington at this moment. He's being honored in the Oval Office, the House and the Senate. In the US news media too. That's troubling because it's his tightly controlled regime that has thwarted US justice since the charges were unsealed in 2017. I'm infuriated by the empty
...words of @StateDept officials who for years have declared their determination to see #AhlamTamimi, the admitted bomber, brought to US justice. Yet here we are, years later, and the bomber's celebrity status in Jordan keeps rising.
I'm speaking at a @CAMERAorg Webinar Feb 11 at 1pm ET on terror and my family's quest for justice. Our daughter Malki was murdered at 15 in the #PalArab terror attack on a pizzeria. Appalling to me how the bomber's freedom and fame are ignored. To register us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regist…
This is her. Jordan's government and diplomats don't want you to know how widely #AhlamTamimi is adored by Jordanian society. The reason why has to do with dead Jewish children like mine. The media suppress this for reasons I think I can explain.
If only my wife and I could compel the many politicians, diplomats, editors, commentators, human rights 'champions' and #justice 'heroes' who suppress the shabby story of this woman's freedom to look her evil in the face: #AhlamTamimi, our child's free-as-a-bird killer
Like me, you may be offended or at least puzzled by views you sometimes see slipped into news reports. Could be spin; maybe bias. But only word captures how the mainstream news industry covers Jordan keeping a confessed bomber shielded from US justice.
This video clip has never been included in any mainstream news report: #AhlamTamimi, the Jordanian woman who says openly, for the record, that she bombed the Jerusalem #Sbarro pizzeria and calls it "my operation". Watch the smile as she tells it.
Hashemite Jordan could have denounced her, arrested her, tried her on terrorism charges, handed her to US law enforcement (as the treaty demands). Instead they did this: they let #AhlamTamimi host her own terror-promoting TV show, filmed weekly in Jordan's capital, for 5 years!
I sometimes need to say this to others so I can make sense of it to myself: This woman, alive, happy, protected in ways most people wouldn't believe by a government that's on fine terms with most countries, is famous because she murdered my 15 year old daughter and 14 others.
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She will stay famous, free, upbeat and adored in #Jordan where she lives until my wife and I and our friends manage to find the way to have the US government raise its voice and tell Jordan this is sickening and under the treaty she has to be sent to Washington this afternoon
3/ We've pushed for this since the US unsealed terror charges against this woman (who is a Hamas agent) in March 2017. Few people ever argue back at bereaved parents like us. Instead, as the news industry and too many officials and lawmakers do, they just stare.