Jordan court upholds death penalty on suspected Iraqi terrorist
Jordan's State Security Court (SSC) on Wednesday stood by its previous ruling to execute Ziyad Karbouli, an Iraqi national, after condemning him for killing a Jordanian truck driver inside Iraq in 2005, the dpa reported.
The SSC decided to conduct a re-trial of Karbouli after Jordan's highest appellate tribunal, the Court of Cassation, overruled the death penalty and said that the SSC had "committed a mistake" by not responding to the request of the defendant's lawyer to refer him to a psychiatrist to evaluate his mental abilities.
Karbouli confessed on the state-run Jordan television in 2006 to killing the Jordanian driver, Khalid Dosouki, and taking part in the murder of two Moroccan diplomats as they drove from Amman to Baghdad.
He retracted his confessions later and alleged that he had given them "under threat".
In the same case, the SSC sentenced Karbouli's brother to death, two others to life imprisonment and eight to 15 years in jail with hard labour. All 11 suspects other than Karbouli were tried in absentia.
