Jordan releases 16 tied to foreign-backed sedition plot Nabih Bulos © (Yousef Allan / Royal Hashemite Court) Jordan s King Abdullah II attends the inauguration of the 19th Parliament s non-ordinary session in Amman in December. (Yousef Allan / Associated Press)
Weeks after their arrest, more than a dozen alleged plotters were freed over their involvement in a royal feud between King Abdullah II and his half-brother and onetime crown prince, Prince Hamzah.
The 16 detainees, many of them members of Prince Hamzah’s staff or his circle of friends from Jordan’s powerful tribes, had been captured in a blitz operation involving multiple strike teams dispatched across the kingdom. They were set to be let go after the king had urged the government to “look into the proper mechanism to have those who were were misled into following the sedition” to be returned to their families, according to a statement released by the palace on Thursday.
Le putsch en Jordanie est sans danger pour Israël, pas le malaise avec le roi
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Royal feud in Jordan causes some to question the monarchy
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As the names of some those captured seeped out many are still unknown Jordanians were shocked. Most of those arrested hailed from the country’s so-called East Bank tribes, the powerful clans that for decades had been the monarchy’s sword and shield, its soldiers and statesmen. East Bankers consider themselves the country’s Indigenous inhabitants, rather than the Jordanians of Palestinian origin who came from areas west of the Jordan River.
The arrests, officials say, were the result of a year-long surveillance operation by the army, police and intelligence service. In their telling, they struck just before the zero hour, averting a wave of chaos and discontent that Prince Hamzah hoped to unleash and ride into the palace to replace his half brother, King Abdullah II.