Jordan Executes Prisoners After ISIS Video of Pilot’s Death

AMMAN, Jordan, Feb 4 (NsNewsWire) — When relatives learned Tuesday night that the Islamic State had released a video showing the death of a Jordanian fighter pilot, First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, they tried to keep it from his mother, Issaf, and his wife, Anwar. They switched off the television and tried to wrest a smartphone from his wife’s hand, but she had already seen a mobile news bulletin.

Married only six months, Anwar ran crying into the street, calling her husband’s name and saying, “Please God, let it not be true.” Issaf fell to the floor screaming, pulled her head scarf off and started tearing at her hair.

That was before they knew how he had been killed. No one dared let them know right away that Lieutenant Kasasbeh’s tormentors had apparently burned him alive inside a cage, a killing that was soon described as the most brutal in the group’s bloody history.

Both prisoners had already been sentenced to death for terrorism offenses. Mr. Karbouli was accused as one of the planners of the 2005 hotel bombings in Amman that killed more than 57 people; Ms. Rishawi was the only one of four suicide bombers in that attack whose explosive vest failed to detonate.

On Tuesday, Anwar Kasasbeh had been laughing at the memory of her husband’s delight when he discovered that her family kept rabbits in their home. After they married, her parents gave them the rabbits.

“It was so funny, he was so happy about those rabbits,” Anwar told a visiting reporter about her 26-year-old husband. “He told me how he always wanted rabbits.”

The video, with its references to the Islamic State’s punishment of nations like Jordan that joined the American-led coalition against it, appeared to be an attempt to cow the Arab states and others that have agreed to battle the militants in Syria. It appeared to have had the opposite effect in Jordan, which suggested its resolve had been stiffened. But the capture of the pilot had already hurt the coalition, with the United Arab Emirates suspending its own airstrikes in December and demanding the group improve its search and rescue efforts for captured members.

The release of the video came after weeks of growing anxiety in Jordan, as the country’s leaders tried to win the release of Lieutenant Kasasbeh, a member of an important tribe and the first fighter for the coalition bombing the Islamic State to be captured. Their attempts became more complicated late last month when the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, suddenly entangled the pilot’s fate with that of a Japanese man it held hostage, demanding that Jordan release Ms. Rishawi from death row in exchange for him.