ammonnews.net

Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Jordanian security authorities on Sunday morning released Essam Al Barqawi, known as Abu Muhamamad Al Maqdisi, a prominent figure in the Salafi Jihadist current, three days after he was arrested for violating traffic law.

Al Maqdisi told Al Jazeera Net after he was released that he was apprehended while getting his car fixed last Thursday by Preventative Security personnel "who monitor him in all his moves," Al Jazeera reported.

Al Maqdisi claimed that his arrest was based on a sentence issued against him in absentia in a case related to traffic law violation after he parked his car near a mosque to perform Friday prayer.

He expressed that police officers dealt with him with "confusion" considering him a "terrorist," as a police officer told him at the police station where he was held, and noted that police took extra security precautions although he was apprehended over a traffic violation, he told Al Jazeera Net.

Al Maqdisi's defense lawyer, Majed al Leftawi, said that the release of Al Maqdisi comes after he appealed a court sentence of one month in prison, ruled against him in abesntia, Al Jazeera reported.

Al Leftawi noted that legal dimensions in Al Maqdisi's case were absent in favor of "security dimensions," claiming that he had learned from the police station that Jordanian authorities had advised not to grant Al Maqdisi release on bail, as is usually done in similar cases.

The lawyer said in statements to Al Jazeera that what proves the "security dimensions" of Al Maqdisi's arrest is that the officers who arrested him were civilian security officers who Al Maqdisi had gotten used to their surveillance of his every move."

It is noted that Al Maqdisi was released from prison in 1999 by Royal Amnesty after he was indicted in 1994, and arrested again several times between 2000 and 2007. Al Maqdisi's son was killed by US forces in Mosul, northern Iraq, earlier last month, Al Jazeera reported.