Jordan responded to the Islamic State’s burning execution of pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh by hanging at least two convicted terrorists at dawn Wednesday.
A government spokesman had vowed a “strong, earthshaking and decisive” response Tuesday and five executions were promptly scheduled, including the failed suicide bomber whom the Islamist group wanted to trade for the pilot.
“The revenge will be as big as the calamity that has hit Jordan,” army spokesman Col. Mamdouh al Ameri said in a televised statement Tuesday confirming the death of the pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh.
Jordanian government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani told reporters in Amman late Tuesday evening U.S. time that Sajida al-Rishawi had been executed.
Al-Rishawi was an Iraqi national with ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni-dominated terrorist group out of which the Islamic State grew. She had been designated a suicide bomber as part of a coordinated attack on Amman hotels in 2005 but her bomb-belt failed to detonate. The attack as a whole killed 60 people.
According to the Jordanian spokesman, Ziad al-Karbouly also had been hanged at dawn Wednesday. Al-Karbouly was under sentence of death for plotting terror attacks on Jordanians in Iraq.
There was no immediate word on the other three death sentences.
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