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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - The State Security Court, on Wednesday, sentenced 6 persons to life in jail and handed two others 15-year terms each after they were convicted of plotting to launch a large-scale terrorist attack on the headquarters of the intelligence department using trucks loaded with chemical weapons. The court said in the 128-page sentence that the group planned in 2004 to attack the premises of the General Intelligence Department with trucks and cars loaded with 20 tons of explosives and chemicals they manufactured in a remote farm north of the Kingdom.

The plot's convicted mastermind, Azmi al-Jayousi, was orchestrating the manufacture of the explosives because he had a long history in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. The convict said the planned bombing was set to destroy everything in a radius of 4 square kilometers and send a cloud of toxic gas that would claim the lives of all those living in the vicinity of the intelligence department.

The same convict, Al-Jayousi, said the estimated destructive power of the explosion would be equivalent to 60 tons of the highly explosive TNT.

They confessed that they also planned to bomb the prime ministry, the U.S. embassy and major hotels and assassinate security officials. Noteworthy, security services and explosives experts had tested out the destructive power of the seized explosives by blowing up a sample amount of 50 kilograms. It resulted in a massive explosion and a cloud of toxic gas in addition to destroying the team's vehicles despite being at about 500 meters away from the blast site.


*Petra