AMMAN – A military court on Sunday rejected a bail
application by Islamist cleric Abu Qatada, who faces terror charges in Jordan
following his deportation from Britain, his lawyer said.
"The state security court today refused to release Abu
Qatada on bail," Taysir Diab told AFP.
"The court gave no reason for its decision. I will meet
with Abu Qatada on Wednesday to look into the issue and decide future
steps," Diab said, without elaborating.
Abu Qatada, 53, was charged on July 7 with "conspiracy
to carry out terrorist acts", just hours after his deportation from
Britain. He pleaded not guilty.
The next day, Diab asked the military tribunal to release
the Palestinian-born preacher on bail.
Jordanian law gives him the right to a retrial with him
present in the dock, but the date for such a trial has not yet been set.
He is currently in the Muwaqqar prison, a maximum security
facility that houses more than 1,000 inmates, most of them Islamists convicted
of terror offences.
Abu Qatada was condemned to death in absentia in 1999 for
conspiracy to carry out terror attacks, including on the American school in
Amman.
But the sentence was immediately commuted to life
imprisonment with hard labour.
In 2000, he was sentenced in his absence to 15 years for
plotting to attack tourists in Jordan during millennium celebrations.
Britain's expulsion of Abu Qatada came after Amman and
London last month ratified a treaty guaranteeing that evidence obtained by
torture would not be used in his retrial.
His wife and five children are planning to move to Amman
from London, a family friend has told AFP.
Abu Qatada was born Omar Mahmud Mohammed Otman in Bethlehem
in the now Israeli-occupied West Bank, which was in Jordan at the time of his
birth.
Videotapes of his sermons were allegedly found in the
Hamburg flat of 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta.
Top Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon once branded Abu Qatada
Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe, although he denies ever having met
the late Al-Qaeda leader.
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