US may have questioned Jordan bomber
Jordanian authorities said Safaa Mohammed Ali, aged 23, was part of the al-Qaida in Iraq squad that bombed the Grand Hyatt, Radisson SAS and Days Inn hotels on Wednesday. In Baghdad, the US command said a man by that name was detained by US forces in November 2004 during their assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. The Americans said they did not know if the man they detained was the same Safaa Mohammed Ali identified by the Jordanians as one of the bombers.
He was detained but was released two weeks later because there was no "compelling evidence to continue to hold him", the military said.
The US detention of thousands of Iraqis has been cited especially by members of the Sunni Arab minority that fuels the insurgency as a motivation for the continuing violence.
Jordan said a Safaa Mohammed Ali, who came from the militant hotbed of Anbar Province which includes Fallujah, drove with three other Iraqis into Jordan on November 5. Four days later they attacked the three hotels. Among the group of four was Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, the woman who appeared on Jordanian TV confessing she and her husband entered the Radisson, both aiming to detonate explosives-packed belts at a wedding reception.
But al-Rishawi said in the confession that her belt's trigger cord failed and she fled, while her husband, Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari, carried out the attack.
"My husband detonated (his bomb) and I tried to explode (mine) but it wouldn't," said al-Rishawi during the three-minute television segment, in which she was shown wearing the disabled belt.
Her confession drew a mixed reaction among Jordanians.
"I sat there watching and couldn't understand how she could be speaking so coldly," said Adel Fathi, aged 29, who lost three relatives in the Radisson attack.
Al-Rishawi, 35, from the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi and the sister of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's slain lieutenant in western Iraq, was arrested on Sunday when police swooped on a safe house in Amman.
Many Jordanians doubted al-Rishawi's confession was real.
"There are many contradictions, and it just doesn't make sense," said Mohammed al-Fakhiri, a 33-year-old mobile phone shop owner in Amman.
Al-Rishawi said her husband exploded his belt and she couldn't detonate hers. But it wasn't clear whether her husband blew himself up before her bomb malfunctioned or after.
She said her husband made all the arrangements for the plot and drove the group from Anbar to Amman, an eight-hour trip across the desert landscape.
Investigators are still interrogating al-Rishawi, who officials believe may provide a key link to al-Zarqawi.
