Jordan Jails Islamists Said Targeting U.S. Troops(reuters pulls story)
reuters via abc news  | Monday, December 27, | Suleiman al-Khalidi
 

Jordan's military court sentenced a radical Muslim preacher and three Saudi fugitives sympathetic to al Qaeda to 15 years in jail Monday for possessing arms in an alleged plot to attack U.S. troops in Jordan.

Mohammad Chalabi, 36, better known as Abu Sayyaf, an alleged sympathizer of the militant al-Qaeda network chief Osama bin Laden, and 10 others were originally charged with targeting Jordan's army bases where they believed American troops were stationed prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year.

If they had been convicted on that charge they would have been sentenced to death, judicial sources said.
 

But the three-man military tribunal dropped the main charge of "conspiracy with intent to engage in terror attacks" saying U.S. troops in Jordan were a phantom target.
 

"The defendants' search for U.S. troops in Jordan was deemed an impossible target as there are no troops on Jordanian soil," chief judge Fawaz al-Baqour told the court.
 

Abu Sayyaf and three Saudi militants on the run were instead sentenced to 15 years in jail -- the maximum term for illegal possession of weapons.
 

Jordan denies providing logistical backing to Washington's military campaign to invade its neighbor, although U.S. officials have said the U.S. military has used bases in the staunchly pro-Western kingdom in its Iraq campaign.
 

Two defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence, including Saud Mohammed Khalalyeh, 28, a cousin of al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
 

The second was Issam al-Oteibi, better known as Mohammad al-Maqdisi, 43, a prison comrade of Zarqawi in the mid-1990's, whom prominent Islamist experts say has molded the top militant's ideological commitment to fundamentalist Islam.
 

"Tell your masters in Washington and Tel Aviv that we will not submit and will not betray our religion. Sentence us to death our wish is to die as martyrs," an angry Maqdisi said.
 

Baqour also found little evidence to back up the prosecutors' case that the Amman-based U.S. embassy was among the prime targets, saying confessions showed the militants may have at first floated the idea but then realized the difficulty of attacking such a heavily fortified location.
 

The three Saudi militants, Abdul Aziz al-Tayeb, Khaled Fuheid and Issa al-Rweili, who allegedly financed and recruited Islamic militants to fight U.S. troops in Iraq, were charged following the arrest of Abu Sayyaf and his aides late last year.
 

Baqour said rocket propelled grenades and AK-47 assault guns were found in the homes of some of the defendants. They had been smuggled from Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion.
 

Prosecutors alleged the defendants had confessed to making detailed plans and surveying several military bases in the south of Jordan near the border with Iraq where they believed U.S. troops were deployed. Intelligence officers say Abu Sayyaf, a popular preacher in the volatile desert city of Maan some 160 miles south of the capital and seen as a stronghold of Muslim fundamentalists, had both hidden weapons and recruited dozens of followers to fight U.S. troops in Iraq.