Jordan deports freed Palestinian prisoner, Nizar Tamimi, husband of U.S.-wanted Ahlam al-Tamimi after authorities refused to renew his Jordanian residency permit which was being renewed every 3-months since 2011.  

Jordan disallows a married couple to live together on US orders. The authorities informed Nizar a week ago, that his Jordanian permit would not be renewed again, and that he had to leave the country without mentioning any reasons. According to analysts, this move comes after the US put massive pressure on Jordan to extradite his wife, Ahlam Al-Tamimi. And Jordan refused.  

Why is Ahlam wanted by the US? 

Ahlam, 40, a Jordanian national, was a journalism student at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank in 2001. In 2003, She was convicted by an Israeli court with six life sentences for assisting; choosing the target and guiding the bombers in Jerusalem cafe bombing  16 years ago, that killed 13 Israelis and wounded more than 120 others. Two of them were Israeli- Americans. Ahlam was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap between the Palestinian resistance and Israel. 

Ahlam told the media that she learnt, for the first time, from Interpol in Jordan about the charges filed in the US against her, as American nationals were killed, in the bombing. She also insisted that she was not against the US and had not intended to target US citizens. She added that she had been resisting the Israeli occupation legally, according to the international laws. 

In 2000, the second Intifada or the Al-Aqsa Intifada erupted in the Palestinian occupied territories against the Israeli occupation, where 3,136 Palestinians, among them thousands of women and children were murdered by Israeli occupation fire. 

Ahlam’s husband’s deportation from Jordan returned her to the life of separation in Israeli custody.  Ahlam and Nizar were engaged to be married whilst in the prison, and soon after their release, were married in Jordan.  Nizar al-Tamimi, 44, is her cousin. He spent 19 years in Israeli jails for killing an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank.  They were both released in the Shalit swap in 2011. 

How is Jordan stuck in it?

According to the AP, The US “Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020,” signed into law on December 20, provides (section 7055) for financial consequences for Jordan if the case is not handled properly. Billions of dollars of foreign assistance to Jordan from the US could be used as leverage to get Jordanian authorities to extradite Ahlam according to a statement by The US State Department in June. 

In 2017, Jordanian courts said that their constitution does not allow for the extradition of Jordanian nationals. So, the court ruled that they could not send Ahlam to the US, saying that the 1995 extradition treaty with the US, had not been ratified.   

The US aid has long been a sizable source of funding to Jordan. In early 2018, the Trump administration signed a five-year, $6.4bn, aid agreement with Jordan that increased the annual amount of aid by $275m to $1.3bn. 

Ahlam is left with staying in her country or risking her life to join her husband in Qatar. She faces a possible execution or life in prison if she is captured, tried, and convicted in the US. 

Ahlam sent an appeal to king Abdallah II to restore stability to the life of her family through the return of her husband to Jordan and to his house and his wife. 

Palestinians are wondering why the US is going after Ahlam Tamim for assisting in killing Israeli-American. and forgetting  the Americans  who was murdered deliberately in Palestine, as Rachel Corrie who got  bulldozed to death by Israeli occupation forces  while defending the people of Rafah.  Her family kept appealing the US administration to sue the murders since 2003, but nothing has come of their appeals thus far.