Jordan sentences man to death over IS affiliation

AMMAN: A Jordanian military court on Monday sentenced a man to death and six others to lengthy prison sentences for belonging to the Islamic State group, judicial sources said.

The man sentenced to death by hanging had been found guilty of "planning and executing terrorist acts in 2016 inside Jordanian territory targeting alcohol shops", the sources told AFP. The court sentenced five other men to 15 years’ hard labour and another to 10 years’ hard labour.

All were found guilty of "committing terrorist acts", "manufacturing flammable and incendiary materials for illicit use", "promoting the ideas of a terrorist group", and "attempting to join a terrorist group".

The seven convicts, aged between 20 and 30, promoted the jihadist group on social media and often met at the home of the man sentenced to death, the indictment said. "They agreed that their first terrorist attack would be on a liquor stores in Amman," it said.

The group torched a number of stores with Molotov cocktails before security agencies arrested six of them in February. The military court hears terrorism-related cases on a weekly basis. Most of the defendants are alleged supporters of IS or Al-Nusra Front, once al-Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria.