Seeking Without Finding in Jordan and DC

What's the real meaning of a declaration by America's most senior officials that the US "continues to seek" a fugitive who has evaded them for nearly 6 years despite living at an address known to all the relevant officials and in a kingdom that's massively funded by US taxpayers? pic.twitter.com/rJV5E88Z68

— This Ongoing War (@ThisOngoingWar) December 2, 2022

It doesn't take a cynic to understand the real meaning of "continues to seek" when USG officials offer it as an excuse. Ahlam Tamini, the supposedly wanted fugitive, continues to hide in plain sight, so if we really wanted her we'd have her by now.

The terrorist who organized a suicide attack on a restaurant in Jerusalem that killed two U.S. citizens and 13 others is on the FBI's Most Wanted list. But if we were really honest with ourselves, we'd move her to a Kinda Sorta Wanted list, because obviously we aren't looking very hard.

Don't we do extraordinary rendition of terrorists any more? We did once. Several administrations ago, our current POTUS said this about rendition:

Rendition is the practice of detaining a terrorist operative in a foreign country and transferring him or her to the United States or to another foreign country. It has proved to be an effective way to take terrorists off the street and collect, on occasion, some valuable information.

Biden then qualified his praise of rendition by positing that "our commitments to the rule of law and civil liberties" are vital to maintaining "foreign coalitions that are significantly more consequential long term and essential to our efforts to combat international terrorism" and therefore a rendition program should be governed by law. 

That was a problem because we sometimes took wanted people away without first getting the permission of their governments, a practice we called extraordinary rendition. 

Concerning Tamini, I have to very much doubt that the monarch who rules Jordan is a big respecter of whatever laws and civil liberties they may have over there in his kingdom. Certainly not when he wants revenge, it would seem, judging by his perfect willingness to order summary executions to retaliate for the brutal murder of one of the pilots. 

Would the King of Jordan really be terribly upset by a little rendition? C'mon man©, of course not. 

And if he were, then is he really a coalition partner that we want? 

Extradite This Terrorist

You may be familiar with this diplomatic conflict between the U.S. and the Kingdom of Jordan. The bottom line is that we have a wanted fugitive by the name of Ahlam Ahmad Al-Tamini, whom the Department of Justice would like to prosecute for "Conspiring to Use and Using a Weapon of Mass Destruction Against a United States National Outside the United States Resulting in Death and Aiding and Abetting and Causing an Act to be Done." Al-Tamini lives very openly in Jordan, but the authorities there refuse to render her to the U.S. for trial.

Jordan's stated reason for not extraditing Al-Tamini is that her prosecution in the U.S. would violate the old Anglo-Saxon principle of double jeopardy, since Al-Tamini was once before convicted and imprisoned in Israel for the same bombing that gives rise to the U.S. charges. That excuse is complete rubbish. The U.S. charges are for the separate offense of murdering a U.S. citizen overseas, and the Justice Department appears to be confident they can prosecute her without implicating double jeopardy.

In any case, the idea that the King of Jordan won't extradite Al-Tamini because of some tender concern for English common law traditions is too ridiculous for words. He can and will act like a king when he wants to, and good for him. 

Moreover, Al-Tamini's release from prison in Israel, although it is sometimes confused with her being pardoned by Israel, was obtained by means of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. "Exchange" does not begin to describe that one-sided affair in which Israel gave in to political/emotional coercion by the terrorist group HAMAS. But, really, what else could they do? That small country is like an extended family, so to end the five year-long torment of one Israeli solider was worth releasing over a thousand prisoners. 

All monarchies strike me as farcical, but the legitimacy of the Hussein dynasty of Jordan is even thinner than most. Why the Palestinian native population tolerates a British-imposed royal family that originated from elsewhere, I have never understood. (Of course, at least one Palestinian nationalist did not tolerate it.) Does the USG really need to placate them?

Well then, why doesn't the USG bring enough pain to Jordan to overcome its reluctance to extradite Al-Tamini? Presumably, the Biden administration (like its predecessor) must see some larger foreign policy interest involved that makes it willing to tolerate the dissonance of naming a top-wanted fugitive that it will not make a serious effort to capture.

I am realistic about the chances of a petition stirring up any action in either the Administration or Congress, but I'm signing it anyway. Al-Tamini has punishment coming to her from the fellow citizens of one of her victims, and I hope she gets it.