JORDAN: MAN SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR 2019 KNIFE ATTACK ON TOURISTS

January 12, 2021:

Jordan’s state security court sentenced a citizen to death on 12 January 2021 for the 2019 stabbing of eight people, four of them foreign tourists, at one of the kingdom’s ancient sites.
The victims, who included one Swiss and three Mexican tourists, all survived the November 2019 knife attack in the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Jerash, some 50km (30 miles) north of the capital, Amman.
Mustafa Abu Ruwais, 24, was sentenced to “death by hanging for the terrorist knife attack on tourists,” the court said.
Ruwais, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, was at the time of the attack a resident of the Souf camp in Jerash, which houses some 20,000 Palestinian refugees.
He was arrested immediately afterwards and charged with terrorism offences in January last year.
The Jordanian victims included a tour guide and a security officer who attempted to intervene.
According to court documents, two other men associated with Ruwais received prison sentences.
The three men became supporters of the ISIL (ISIS) group in 2019.
When Ruwais and one of the men tried and failed to join the group, the documents said, they planned to promote the organisation’s ideas by distributing 350 leaflets in Jerash promoting the armed group’s ideology.