Would-be bomber charged over Jordan hotel attacks

AMMAN, Mar 14 (Reuters) An unsuccessful female suicide bomber arrested after a series of deadly hotel bombings in Jordan last year has been charged over the attacks, along with eight other wanted militants, security sources said today.

They said Sajida al-Rishawi would face two charges arising from the al Qaeda attack on Amman hotels on November 9 which killed 60 people. The other eight suspects, including al Qaeda's Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, are still at large.

The sources said prosecutors charged her with conspiracy to carry out terrorist acts causing death and destruction, and the illegal possession of weapons and explosives.

Rishawi, 35, an Iraqi, failed to blow herself up during the attacks. She was arrested shortly afterwards when she tried to seek refuge with the family of her sister's husband, a Jordanian killed in clashes with U.S. forces in Iraq.

The charges of conspiracy and having explosives to use illegally carry the death sentence.

Judicial sources said Rishawi would be the only defendant at a trial that may start as early as next month.

Jordanian born Zarqawi, whose real name is Ahmed Fadhil al-Khalayleh, is under sentence of death already for involvement in plots to destabilise U.S. ally Jordan.

The charge sheet obtained by Reuters details how Zarqawi sent an advance team of four militants into the kingdom two months before the attacks and smuggled in large quantities of explosives.

''They managed to enter the kingdom after Zarqawi supplied them with the explosives to execute the terrorist suicide operation,'' the prosecutors said.

The al Qaeda group, with the exception of Zarqawi and another Jordanian aide, are Sunni Arabs from Iraq's western province of Anbar, a insurgent stronghold that borders Jordan.

Among those listed in the indictment were two dead Iraqi suicide bombers, Ali Shamari and Rwad Jasem Abed, who blew themselves up in the hotels.

Another was a second woman, Hiyam Khaled Hassan, who fled back to Iraq after helping prepare the operation.

Most of those killed were Jordanians attending weddings at the hotels, which are also frequented by diplomats, aid workers journalists and security contractors working in Iraq.

Zarqawi's group in Iraq said it attacked the hotels because they were used by U.S. and Israeli spies.

The prosecutor said the amount of explosives sent by Zarqawi was meant to inflict the highest possible casualties.

''All the defendants belong to the al Qaeda organisation in Iraq led by Zarqawi. This network has taken it upon itself to kill civilians and terrify innocents regardless of the consequences,'' prosecutors said in the charge sheet.

Jordan, a close U.S. ally and one of two Arab states to have concluded a peace treaty with Israel, had previously been spared al Qaeda-linked attacks suffered by other countries.

Reuters SI DB1948