Plotting mass murder in the name of Allah and Islam -- but this will arouse substantially less indignation in the Western press than advertisements calling such attacks "savage."
"Jordan 'foils major al-Qaeda plot,'" by Kadhim Shubber and Adrian Blomfield in the Telegraph, October 21 (thanks to Laith Georgie):
Jordan claimed on Sunday to have thwarted one of the largest terror attacks ever planned in the Middle East after foiling an al-Qaeda plot to kill diplomats and detonate a series of bombs in Amman.Ending a four-month surveillance operation, the Jordanian intelligence service arrested 11 suspected militants with links to al-Qaeda.
Government officials in Amman said that the conspirators had aimed to eclipse the bombing of three hotels in the city in 2005, an attack that claimed more than 60 lives.
Using arms smuggled in from neighbouring Syria, the militants aimed to bring death and destruction across the capital, according to Jordan’s General Intelligence Department.
Demonstrating the ambitious scope of the plot, the militants are alleged to have planned to launch suicide bombings in two shopping malls in Amman in a diversionary attack.
With the attention of the security forces distracted, the suspects then planned to launch their main assault in Abdoun, the city’s most prosperous district.
In an operation that would have been similar to the Mumbai attacks of 2008, gunmen and suicide bombers would have worked in tandem to launch a series of assaults in the district.
Western diplomats, many of whom are based in Abdoun, were among the targets, Jordan’s Petra news agency reported.
The plot would have culminated in mortars being fired into the district.
Samih Maayatah, Jordan’s information minister, said that the suspected terrorists had entered the country from Syria, although all 11 are believed to be Jordanian. The group is said to have been advised by al-Qaeda explosives experts in Iraq....
When the arrests were made, the group was in the process of choosing suicide bombers for the attacks, they said. Machine guns, and explosive materials – including TNT – were seized during the raids....
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I expect the 11 arrested Jihadis who were intercepted by Jordanian intelligence to have a pretty hot time of it while in custody.
Is the US going to put pressure on Jordan to respect the human rights of these mass murderers? Is the US going to pressure Jordan to do away with the present government, based primarily on Bedouin tribal loyalty, and institute a pure democracy, where sharia and Islamic theocracy, will come into their own?
Jordan, emphatically a non-democracy with an active ruling monarchy, is one of the few places in the Muslim Middle East where Christians and non-majority Muslims are relatively safe. Is the US going to continue its arrogant insistence that one type of government fits all peoples, continuing to create deadly enemies for itself?