Meshaal in Amman for his mother’s funeral

Khaled Meshaal arrived in Amman on Sunday to take part in the funeral of his mother, AFP has reported The head of the Hamas Political Bureau will apparently receive people offering condolences near the Islamic cemetery in Sweeleh suburb, in the north of the Jordanian capital.

According to AFP, the government in Amman granted permission for Meshaal to enter the country for “humanitarian” reasons. Even though he holds a Jordanian passport, he was deported from Jordan along with five of his colleagues from Hamas in 1999; the senior official was based in Damascus until the start of the revolution in 2011, after which he moved to Qatar.

Meshaal’s previous visit to Amman was three years ago for an official meeting with King Abdullah. Before that, in 2009 he went to Jordan for his father’s funeral and again in 2012 for the funeral of Shaikh Omar Al-Ashqar, a founding member of Hamas.

In 2006, a delegation of Hamas MPs was given permission to visit Amman, but were stopped when it was claimed that the movement had smuggled arms across the border from Syria.

Israeli agents tried to assassinate Meshaal in Amman in 1997. They injected him with a lethal drug but were captured by his bodyguards, who handed them over to Jordanian security officers. The late King Hussein threatened to cut relations with Israel if the government in Tel Aviv did not provide the antidote; he also demanded the release of Hamas founder Shaikh Ahmed Yassin from an Israeli prison. Both demands were met, and Meshaal recovered.