Activist: Jordan is putting pressure on freed prisoner, Ahlam Tamimi

Jordanian activist Mazen Malasa said that the Zionist lobby is chasing freed Palestinian prisoner Ahlam Tamimi who spent around ten years in Israeli jails, Al-Resalah reported.

Malasa, a freed prisoner himself and member of the Prisoners Committee of the Jordan Engineers Association, said that the the Zionist lobby has put pressure on the US administration to pursue Tamimi and demand her arrest through Interpol so she does not get out of prison or leave Jordan.

The Jordanian government is giving in to the US and Zionist pressure and putting Tamimi under pressure, including by deporting her husband, Nizar Tamimi, Malasa added.

READ: Jordan King warns US that West Bank violence will lead to regional instability

“Is the Jordanian government trying to put pressure on Ahlam to leave Jordan and then get arrested? Or is it trying to punish her for her struggle against the Israeli occupation, or is it trying to please the American and Zionists even if at the expense of our daughter?” he asked.

On 9 August 2001, a Palestinian man broke into a pizza restaurant in occupied Jerusalem and blew himself up, killing 15 people including two American citizens, one of whom was Malki Roth, an Israeli-American woman.

Tamimi was arrested for her alleged involvement in the operation weeks later and was sentenced to 16 life sentences. She was released in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Palestinian factions. She currently lives in Jordan.

Last year, a document issued by the Interpol revealed that Tamimi’s name had been removed from its wanted list.

In 1995, the United States and Jordan signed an extradition treaty, but in 2017, Jordan’s high court blocked Tamimi’s extradition, since the treaty was never ratified.

In 2013, the Justice Department included Tamimi on the FBI’s most wanted list and charged her with “conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction against Americans outside the United States”.

READ: Jordan hosts Palestinian-Israeli talks amid tensions