AMMAN: Nine terror suspects allegedly involved in an Al Qaeda-linked plot to carry out chemical and conventional attacks in Jordan obstructed Wednesday’s opening of their trial, refusing to deal with military judges considering the case.

Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s point man in Iraq who is on the run with a $25 million bounty on his head, and three other fugitives are being tried in absentia with the nine men who have been in police custody since April.

Azmi al-Jayousi, allegedly an al-Zarqawi co-conspirator and head of the Jordan-based terror cell, refused to answer the chief military judge when he sought the routine verification of the defendants’ identities at the opening trial. “I and the other defendants don’t want to speak to you until you heed our demands to permit our families to visit us and allow us to join the cellblocks of political prisoners,” al-Jayousi told Col Fawaz Buqour, president of the State Security Court.

Buqour responded: “We’ll see.” Military prosecutors said the defendants were confined to solitary confinement in an undisclosed Jordanian prison.

Source [Daily Times]

I can’t believe this murderer is asking to be treated like a political prisoner? What politics is he preaching? The politics of butchering the innocent? I really don’t think either this guy or his cronies should receive any accommodation.