Jordan charges Dutch MP over “Fitna”

A Jordanian prosecutor charged far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders on Tuesday with blasphemy and violation of publishing laws over his film judged anti-Islamic.

Jordan's publishing laws ban insults against Islam and religions.

The charges also include defamation and violation of online publishing laws, according to Tarek Hawamdeh, a lawyer for some 30 Jordanian media outlets which filed an official complaint earlier this month seeking court action against Wilders.
Wilders's 17-minute film "Fitna" ("discord" in Arabic), which links the Muslim holy book, the Quran, with terror attacks, has sparked uproar in Muslim countries. "Punishment could be up to three years in jail. Wilders has been summoned to appear before the court.

He will be given 15 days to comply, otherwise, an arrest warrant might be issued through the Interpol," Hawamdeh told AFP.

Dutch prosecutors said Monday that the Wilders's documentary, though offensive to Muslims, did not give rise to a punishable offence. "Several of the utterances are indeed offensive about Muslims but were made in the context of public debate," they said in a statement. "In public debate, statements can be shocking, sharp or offensive, but that does not make it punishable."The kingdom has condemned the film and some Jordanian MPs called for Amman to break diplomatic relations with The Hague

Jordan prison unrest continues after 3 dead

Inmates at a prison north of the Jordanian capital of Amman set fire to their cells on Tuesday a day after three rioting prisoners died in clashes with security forces at another jail, police said. "A number of prisoners convicted of murder and robbery inflicted injuries on themselves and set fire to their cells this morning at Swaka prison" north of Amman, police spokesman Mohammed Khatib said in a statement.

"They were showing solidarity with inmates who rioted on Monday at Muaqqar prison (in southeast Amman), but police tackled the situation and evacuated the inmates from the cells for their own safety."
Khatib did not elaborate, but a security source told AFP that the prisoners were protesting at being segregated from other convicts.

On Monday, three Muaqqar inmates were killed and dozens were injured in clashes with police after prison authorities decided to segregate them from others.They also cut themselves with sharp tools and set fire to their cells.

In March 2006, inmates at Juweideh prison south of the capital rioting for the same reason briefly held prison officials hostage

Jordan was CIA's top rendition location: HRW

The CIA secretly transported at least 14 war on terror detainees to Jordan between 2001 and 2004, making it the top "rendition" destination at that time, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

"While a handful of countries received persons rendered by the United States during this period, no other country is believed to have held as many as Jordan," the rights group said in a statement.

The prisoners were interrogated and tortured by Jordan's General Intelligence Department, according to a new Human Rights Watch report that documents eight previously unknown cases of rendition.

GID officials who met with Human Rights Watch in Amman in 2007 denied receiving CIA prisoners and denied using torture.

But the rights group said the denials were unconvincing "given the weight of credible evidence showing otherwise.

"The report is "based largely on firsthand information from Jordanian former prisoners who were detained with the non-Jordanian terrorism suspects," it said."We've documented more than a dozen cases in which prisoners were sent to Jordan for torture," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch.Prisoners rendered to Jordan included at least five Yemenis, three Algerians, two Saudis, a Mauritanian, a Syrian, a Tunisian, and one or more Chechens from Russia, the group said.

They may also have included a Libyan, an Iraqi Kurd, a Kuwaiti, one or more Egyptians, and a national of the United Arab Emirates.

The report includes an excerpt of a note handwritten by a rendered prisoner while in Jordanian custody in late 2002.

The prisoner is now at the U.S. war on terror prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi wrote that GID interrogators beat him "in a way that does not know any limits.""They threatened me with electricity, with snakes and dogs .... [They said] we'll make you see death .... They threatened to rape me," the note said.A common torture method was falaqa, by which prisoners are given extended beatings on the bottoms of their feet.

"Just about everyone at GID was beaten with sticks," a Jordanian former prisoner told Human Rights Watch.

"People were beaten on their feet. They did it in the basement.""Outsourcing torture is not only wrong, it's illegal," Mariner said. "And the U.S. can't say it doesn't torture if it sends people to countries that do."

Jordan: New restrictions on Internet cafés and violating privacy of users

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information denounced today decisions released by the Jordanian ministry of interior increasing restrictions on internet cafés in Jordan, on pretext of maintaining security, through installing cameras to monitor users of these cafés. The Network also emphasized that these procedures are considered as a real retreat from freedom of internet and the right to exchange information.

The Jordanian ministry of interior has recently issued new instructions for monitoring internet cafés widespread all over the Jordanian cities, as it enforced internet cafés owners to install cameras to the front of their cafés in order to identify the users of these cafés.

In addition to the cameras, we find that security decisions are also enforcing internet cafés owners to register the users' personal data such as their names, phone numbers and time of use, as well as the IP number of the café and data of websites explored by the users.

The newly-issued decisions of "organizing the work of internet cafés" also included enforcing internet cafés owners to install censorship programs to prevent access to websites containing pornographic material, or an affront to religious beliefs, or promoting the use of drugs, tobacco.

It is worthy to mention that Jordan is one of the most Arab countries that internet cafés are widespread on a large scale.

Even Shafiq Rashidat Street (Unversity Street) in Irbid City, has been registered in Guinness Book of Records in terms of the highest number of Internet cafés in one street.

This street contains more than 130 cafés although the street length is not exceeding 2000 meters.

An earlier report of the Arab network had expressed cautious optimism on Jordan, as the decisions of "organizing the work of internet cafés and centers" were more flexible in the past, regarding terms & conditions that have to be available in these centers and the effort exerted to expand the number of internet users.

The Arabic Network while denounces such decisions which violate right of exchanging information and privacy of internet users, is calling the Jordanian government to retreat from such arbitrary decisions which would precipitate involving Jordan among the countries which are hostile to freedom of internet.

For more information:the internet in Jordan (2004 report),visit http://www.hrinfo.org/en/reports/net2004/jordan.shtml

the internet in Jordan (2006 report),visit

http://www.openarab.net/en/reports/net2006/jordan.shtml

Jordan mum kills newborn, dumps it in sewer

Hours after baby rescued from garbage dump

A few hours after a newborn was found shivering with the cold in a garbage bag in the Jordanian capital, the police said they found a dead baby in a sewer.The latest incident took place in a small town in West Jordan, so police were able to identify the mother easily. They went to her house, where they found her with her mother and uncle.Preliminary investigations revealed that the woman was illicitly involved with a laborer in the town, and got pregnant. After the delivery, her mother strangled the baby.

The woman, her mother, and her uncle then got rid of the body by throwing it in the sewage system of their bathroom, police said, making it easier to uncover the crime. A short while earlier, two garbage collectors found a naked newborn in garbage bag under a bridge in central Amman. Although the bag was black and tightly closed, the baby's cries attracted their attention."The baby was blue from the cold," Petra News Agency quoted the head of the Amman Environment Department, Omar Al-Abbadi, as saying.The director of the Islamic Cultural Center at the University of Jordan, Ahmed Al-Awaysha, said "disgrace, not poverty" was to blame for the recent cases in the country.

Jordan allowed for Human Rights to visit the prison intelligence

The Jordanian government said that a delegation from Human Rights Watch American, "Human Rights Watch", will visit the prison intelligence in the coming weeks, after criticism by the Organization of the detention conditions in the prison's most powerful security apparatus in the country. And government spokesman Nasser quality that the visit will take place within the framework of contacts taking place between the government and human rights organizations, revealed that the visit "is not the first," and added "there is openness and transparency and permanent channels of communication between Human Rights Watch and the security agencies and was the American representative of the organization in the Middle East and North Africa Fadi judge, and the researcher Christophe Wilkie met Intelligence Director General Mohamed Golden last year after the organization issued a report bear heavily on what he described as "dubious arrests" in the General Intelligence Service in this context said that the quality of Jordan deal with the international human rights organizations " in all frankness and transparency ", pointing out that his country is keen to arrange visits by human rights organizations for prisons," responds to queries from these organizations if there was a reason for that and stressed that the prisons in Jordan subject to the laws and regulations apply international standards in this regard and report criticized the Human Rights Watch General last existence of a number of detainees in the prison intelligence for years without trial, also criticized what he described as a "problem the rule of law in Jordan and the mainstream Salafi ideology theoretician Essam Al-Otaibi, alias Abu Mohammed Conclave, the most famous prisoners in the general intelligence, where authorities detained there since in July 2005 following an interview with Al-Jazeera says his family that his health had deteriorated recently after going on hunger strike result of the continued detention without trial and conversion of a number of family members Conclave that the security authorities requested the Conclave to sign a document confirming his retreating systematize intellectual exchange for the release it criticized the President of the Arab Organization for Human Rights Hani Aldahlah allowed to inspect the prison, the American intelligence, and rejected similar requests by his organization and local organizations to him. A Aldahlah the presentation by the Human Rights Watch organization for the delegate attendance at the scheduled visit to the prison intelligence, and added, "officials intelligence refused a delegate of the Organization. " Aldahlah said that the Human Rights Watch received special treatment as the Organization of American calculated Jordanian government account to the government, according to the recipe. Aldahlah considered that the security authorities would not allow the Organization of American access to the true reality of prison intelligence, and added: I think it will be arranging the visit will allow visitors access to the true reality in prison was the decision of the Commission on Human Rights at the United Nations Manfred Novak in last year sharply criticized the Jordanian authorities, and spoke in a report of the International Human Rights Committee of the existence of "torture" in Jordanian prisons, is the question the prison in Jordan, one of the issues that cause headache for successive governments and, most recently, the families of the detainees complained of the increasing volume of Islamist attacks on policemen detained in prison drive (100 km south of the capital Amman), but the security authorities deny the existence of any abuses in prisons