Jihadists (illustration)
Jihadists (illustration)iStock

Two Jordanians were sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in jail with hard labor for planning attacks on the Amman embassies of Russia, Iran and Israel, AFP reported.

Jordan's state security court convicted the two men for having manufactured explosives and plotting attacks on behalf of "a terrorist group".

In the charge sheet seen by AFP, the two were accused of belonging to the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group and of planning to carry out bomb attacks in 2016 on the Russian, Iranian and Israeli embassies in Amman.

They were arrested in March 2016. A suicide bombing in June of that year claimed by ISIS near a border post with Syria killed seven Jordanian soldiers.

Jordan has been targeted by several terrorist attacks in recent years, particularly since it became a leading member of the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

At least one hundred detainees have been sentenced to death in Jordan in recent years, many on charges related to membership in Islamist groups, who could face capital punishment.

In March, Jordan executed 15 people, including one man who was convicted of an attack on an intelligence compound near a Palestinian “refugee camp” in which five security personnel were killed. Another five were involved in an assault by security forces on a hideout by suspected ISIS jihadists in Irbid in the same year.

In 2015, ISIS shot down a Jordanian warplane conducting airstrikes on Syria as part of the international coalition.

The warplane’s pilot, Maaz al-Kassasbeh, was captured and subsequently burned alive.

Jordan responded by executing two jihadist prisoners it had held, and later launched retaliatory airstrikes against dozens of ISIS targets.

Last November, a court in Amman jailed a Jordanian man for 10 years for plotting attacks on behalf of ISIS against an air base used by the coalition fighting the jihadists.

In February it was reported that Jordanian intelligence had foiled several terrorist attacks by ISIS targeting the U.S. embassy in Amman and Israeli businessmen visiting Jordan.