The former Crown Prince of Jordan was asked to “stop some movements and activities,” said the country’s general on Saturday, while other members of the royal family were arrested in a sweep that would have thwarted a coup plan against King Abdullah II of Jordan. parents.
General Yousef Huneiti, the army’s chief of staff, denied reports that Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, 41 – the king’s half-brother – was arrested along with nearly 20 other detainees for “security reasons”.
The prince was invited, however, to stay at his palace in Amman and not use social media.
Huneti said that an investigation is still underway and its results will be released “in a transparent and clear manner”.
Among the prisoners were Sharif Hassan Ben Zaid, a member of the royal family, and United States-educated Bassem Awadallah, a longtime confidant of the king who served as minister of planning and finance.
“Nobody is above the law and Jordan’s security and stability is above everything,” Huneiti told the official Petra news agency.
Details of the plot are scarce, but arrests of high-ranking officials and members of the royal family are rare in Jordan, an important US ally squeezed between Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
Some 3,000 soldiers are stationed at Muwaffaq Salti Air Force Base, an important area of preparation for the fight against ISIS. The US provides about $ 425 million in military advice to Jordan each year.
Awadallah, who resigned as head of the royal court in 2008, was a key player in economic reforms.
Jordan’s powerful intelligence agency has a pervasive influence on public life, with this role growing in the past year amid emergency laws created at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Civic groups say these powers violate civil and political rights.
With Post Wires