Jordan: Four Jordanian politicians who paid condolences at the family home of al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have been charged with instigating sectarian strife.
The politicians of the Islamic Action Front - Mohammed Abu Fares, Jaafar al-Hourani, Ali Abu Sukkar and Ibrahim al-Mashwakhi - were also charged with racism, said a judicial official.
The four politicians paid their condolences at the family home of al-Zarqawi in Zarqa, a town north of Amman, on Friday, two days after the Jordanian-born terrorist was killed in a US airstrike in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi, who led al-Qaeda in Iraq, had claimed responsibility for the November 9th attacks on three hotels in Amman in which suicide bombers killed 60 people.
One of the politicians, Mr Fares, described al-Zarqawi as a "martyr", but said he would not apply the term to the "mobs and ignorant people" killed in the bombings.
The politicians' actions provoked widespread indignation. More than 2,000 people protested against their gesture outside parliament yesterday, calling on the king to dissolve the legislature.
Government spokesman Nasser Judeh said relatives of the victims of the November bombings had filed eight lawsuits against the politicians.
Hamza Mansoor, a leader of the Islamic Action Front, Jordan's largest Islamic party, has defended the four politicians, saying they had "paid their condolences to the family of a deceased man regardless of their position toward him and his behaviour". - (AP)