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All-but-Forgotten Prisoner in Jordan Is Suddenly at Center of Swap Demand by ... - New York Times




Islamic militants are suddenly demanding the release of Ms. Rishawi, who helped stage an attack on a Jordanian wedding that killed 27 people in 2005. Majed Jaber/Reuters




AMMAN, Jordan — During the nine years that Sajida al-Rishawi, 46, has been sitting in self-imposed solitary confinement in her cell at the Juweidah Women’s Prison here in Jordan, refusing to mix with other prisoners, she has had hardly any visitors, other than her court-appointed lawyer.


In all that time, Al Qaeda in Iraq, which had dispatched her to Jordan to kill, has only rarely mentioned her, especially after that group morphed into the Islamic State. She was that ultimate embarrassment, the suicide bomber who was unable to complete her mission, then ran away.


Now the militants are suddenly demanding the release of Ms. Rishawi, who spent her honeymoon helping stage an attack on a Jordanian wedding, where 27 guests were killed by her newlywed husband after he succeeded in detonating his explosive vest. The militants said they would free a Japanese hostage in exchange.



On Wednesday, Jordanian officials said they would let Ms. Rishawi go. But they put their own twist on the deal, saying they would do so only if the militants freed a Jordanian Air Force pilot shot down over Syria last month, becoming the first member of the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State to be captured.




Who is Sajida al-Rishawi?



Jordanian TV/Associated Press

  • ▪ A 46-year-old Iraqi woman, Ms. Rishawi admitted on Jordanian television to taking part in a 2005 bomb attack in Amman that killed more than 57 people.

  • ▪ In the attacks, her husband blew himself up, but her own suicide vest failed to detonate.

  • ▪ She was later apprehended and sentenced to death by hanging.

  • ▪ Ms. Rishawi said she volunteered to avenge her first husband and three brothers who were killed in confrontations with American troops in Iraq.

  • ▪ Her family comes from Anbar Province, where the Islamic State currently holds sway. Read more»



Less than a week ago, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, had valued two Japanese hostages at $100 million each. But after killing one of them on Saturday, the group changed its ultimatum: dropping the ransom demand and insisting instead on the trade for Ms. Rishawi. A statement, issued as an audio message from the Japanese hostage, Kenji Goto, a journalist, added a warning that the pilot, First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, would be killed if Ms. Rishawi was not released within 24 hours.


On Thursday the militants then appeared to extend that deadline by a day. But they still have not said they would free Lieutenant Kasasbeh as the Jordanians demanded, only that they would not kill him if Ms. Rishawi was released.


As the crisis dragged on, the question that baffled Jordanians and terrorism experts alike was, as one analyst put it, “Why Sajida?”


“She has no value whatsoever, no social, no political, no security value whatsoever,” said Linda Maieah, a Jordanian journalist who covers extremists, and who interviewed Ms. Rishawi in prison, through her lawyer.


“If ISIS wanted her, they would have asked for her from the first day,” Ms. Maieah said. “For nine years, no one ever asked for her. Even her own tribe didn’t care about her.”


Although the reason for the apparent change of heart by the militants remains unclear, it may be that Ms. Rishawi embodies the evolution of Al Qaeda in Iraq to its present incarnation as the Islamic State. The militants seem to be repurposing “Sister Sajida” as a hero hailing from its early days.


Ms. Rishawi was among four suicide bombers who carried out the Nov. 9, 2005, attacks on three hotels in Amman, killing at least 57 people, including those attending the wedding party that she and her newlywed husband, Ali Shumari, attacked. Jordanians refer to the attacks as their 9/11.


“She was seen as a dupe, even if she showed no remorse, it’s not like she exuded a lot of ideological energy, none at all, in fact,” said Joost Hiltermann, who is in charge of the Middle East for the International Crisis Group. “People see her as a very lesser person.”


She is so poorly regarded, in fact, that Jordanians, in government and out, seemed to have reached a consensus that Ms. Rishawi was not worth keeping in prison, when there was the possibility of saving their pilot’s life by releasing her. Jordanian officials have made it clear that they would not release her to win only the Japanese hostage’s freedom.


Even Ashraf al-Khaled, the groom at the wedding she attacked, said he and his entire surviving family were willing to see her swapped. “She’s a nobody; I don’t think she’s very important,” he said. “If it’s 100 percent sure to get Moaz back, we support this, even though I know if she’s released she will probably do this again.”


Mr. Khaled lost his father in the attack; his wife lost both her parents.


Sajida al-Rishawi hardly came across as much of a firebrand, although she told interrogators she was motivated by vengeance for deaths in her family.


She had been married once before, in her early 30s, unusually late in Anbar Province in Iraq and among the semirural Rishawi tribe she came from. According to Hassan Abu Hanieh, a scholar of Islamist movements, her first husband was a Jordanian member of Al Qaeda in Iraq named Abu Anas al-Urdoni, who was killed fighting the Americans in Fallujah in 2003 or 2004. In rapid succession in 2004, her eldest brother, Thamer, and two other brothers, Yassir and Ammar, were killed by the American military in Anbar Province.




Anwar Tarawneh, center right, the wife of First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, a Jordanian Air Force pilot who is being held hostage by Islamic militants and who could figure in a prisoner swap. Muhammad Hamed/Reuters

Mr. Hanieh and Ms. Maieah both said it was her eldest brother’s death that most affected her. While she was illiterate and worked at a vegetable stand, her brother Thamer had risen to become a close aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who led Al Qaeda in Iraq. Mr. Zarqawi appointed Thamer emir of Anbar Province, Mr. Hanieh said.


After the deaths of her brothers, Ms. Rishawi volunteered for a vengeance mission and was recruited by a cousin early in 2005 for the planned operation attacking hotels in Amman.


A few days in advance, Ms. Rishawi and Mr. Shumari were married in Anbar. That made it easier for them to travel together and stay in the same safe house, without violating Islamic codes on sexual propriety.


At the Radisson SAS Hotel, they had to ask permission to enter the wedding, saying they were Iraqis and just wanted to see what a Jordanian wedding was like. Then they took up positions on opposite sides of a wedding hall inside the five-star hotel, amid hundreds of guests.


Ms. Rishawi tried three times to blow herself up but failed, apparently because of a technical fault in her detonator. As guests danced and whooped in the usual fashion of an Arab wedding, Mr. Shumari climbed atop a table, to give maximum effect to his vest full of high explosives and nails, shouted “Allahu akbar!” and blew up.


Dazed but unhurt, Ms. Rishawi fled. Still wearing her vest under an overcoat, she took refuge in the house of a distant relative in Jordan. The relative later testified that he discovered the vest under her bed when he bent over to pick up a pomegranate that had fallen on the floor, and then turned her in.


After the attack, Mr. Zarqawi had boasted in a message that one of the suicide attackers had been a woman — apparently he was unaware she had survived. By the next day, she was paraded on television, wearing the vest and confessing.


Ms. Maieah, the journalist, said that during the trial she never saw Ms. Rishawi express remorse — or any other emotion. “Her face was always blank, the same facial expression, no happiness, no sadness,” she said.


While she never spoke out in defense of her actions, she stuck to a refusal to join in reciting verses from the Quran in memory of the victims of the attack, when everyone else in the courtroom did so. The Islamic State’s recent demand for her release is a reminder that the group is a direct descendant of Mr. Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq. Mr. Hanieh said _that after Mr. Zarqawi’s death, other leaders came to the fore, including a fellow member of the group’s governing shura, or council, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, who is now the leader of the Islamic State.


“She represents the first generation of ISIS, and one of the first women suiciders,” Mr. Hanieh said. “That makes her very important to them, and they revere Zarqawi.”


Mr. Hiltermann, however, said he would have thought ISIS would have picked more important militants held by Jordan. About 60 other alleged Islamic State or Qaeda prisoners are held by Jordan, including Ziad al-Karbouli, who was Mr. Zarqawi’s top lieutenant at the time of the Jordanian attack and is believed to have helped plan the bombings. Like Ms. Rishawi, Mr. Karbouli has also been sentenced to death.


For her part, Ms. Maieah said Ms. Rishawi was “just a malicious, sneaky lowlife,” adding that “the only reason she was there is a man couldn’t have gotten into a wedding alone.”


Her theory is that the militants are “just doing this to put Jordan in an awkward situation with Japan.” Japan is a major aid donor to Jordan and has pledged $150 million in aid to help Jordan manage more than 600,000 refugees from Syria whose presence has put a strain on Jordan’s resources and raised the specter of unrest.


The demand for Ms. Rishawi’s release has also put Jordan in an awkward situation with its own public, which has been demanding that something be done for Lieutenant Kasasbeh — and complaining that the Japanese hostage should not get precedence.


With a growing chorus of Jordanians, led by Lieutenant Kasasbeh’s father, complaining that the American-led fight against ISIS should not be Jordan’s war, some analysts worry that Jordan’s continued participation in the coalition could even be put into question. In that case, Ms. Rishawi’s extremist supporters may finally have found a use for her — whether or not she gets released.









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