ABU AWDA CELL
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The Jordanian authorities revealed, on 08/04/2005, the arrest, few weeks earlier, in 07/2005, of an Al Qaeda affiliate network of 6 suspects in Jordan. The network was supervised from Iraq by one of Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s lieutenant – Ismail Abu Awda, also known as Abdel Raham al-Afghani, who was plotting a large scale simultaneous attack on oil facilities in Iraq and Jordan in order to stop the oil flow from Kirkuk in Iraq to Northern Jordan and to cut off the main energy lifeline from Jordan to the USA army in Iraq and Baghdad. The plot contained three parts:
A. To blow up the Iraqi-Jordanian oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Zarqa near Kirkuk;
B. To torch the hundreds of American and Jordan tanker trucks waiting outside Jordanian pumping stations including H4 (See map).
C. To attack The Jordanian-Iraqi border terminals.
The cell contained in Jordan six members, led by a Saudi national Fahed Faiqi, born in 1979, who is living in Jordan and acted as Zarqawi’s main contact with Jordanian crime gangs. According to Jordanian Intelligence sources Fahed Faiqi was supposed to command the attacks in Jordan. The cell was connected to Qteishat Cell that was arrested on 02/21/2005 and probably led, eventually, to the arrest of Faiqi’s cell in Jordan.
On 09/19/2005 the trial of the 6 suspects, who were arrested in 07/2005, was opened in Amman Jordan’s capital. The suspects were accused of recruiting volunteers and suicide bombers to fight the Americans in Iraq.
The group managed to send to Iraq 6 Suicide bombers, three of them since the beginning of 2005. One of the suicide volunteers, Raed M. al-Banna committed a suicide attack in Hila South of Baghdad, on 02/28/200. In total over 140 people were killed by suicide bombers recruited by the group. All the recruits went to Iraq through Syria where they received basic training before infilitrating into Iraq.
On 03/08/2006, the Jordanian state security court sentenced eleven Jordanians, including five fugitives in absentia, to prison terms ranging between 15 months and 22 years on charges of planning to join the insurgency in Iraq via Syria. The court claimed one of the defendants, Mohammad al-Titi, was connected to Abu Adam al-Tunisi, an Al Qaeda’s facilitator in Syria.
According to prosecutors, one of the defendants, Hussein Fawzi Kudeisat – a Jordanian cleric still at large – preached in a mosque in Jordan, encouraging people to go to Iraq and fight the Americans.
* Raed Mansour al-Banna arrived from Jordan to Chicago International Airport in USA, on 06/14/2003. He was denied from entering the USA under the excuse that his passport was forged although his passport and his visa were perfectly proper.
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