JORDAN. ZARQAWI GETS THIRD DEATH SENTENCE IN ABSENTIA

Jordan's state security court handed al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi his third death sentence in absentia for planning a failed suicide attack at the border post with Iraq. A three-man military court also handed Saudi-born Fahed Fuheiqi, 24, who was in police custody, a death sentence by hanging, while Jordanian Darar Abu Oudeh, who was a fugitive militant, was given a death sentence in absentia.
Fuheiqi, who entered Iraq from Syria in August 2004, was arrested in December 2004 after his four-wheel-drive car laden with explosives was stopped from driving into several Jordanian petrol tankers carrying fuel to US troops in the border area.
The three militants, including Zarqawi who was accused of masterminding the failed suicide bombing, were found guilty of "conspiring to undertake terror attacks", a charge that carried a death sentence.
Jordanian Zarqawi, whose real name was Ahmed Fadhil al-Khalayleh, had previously been sentenced to death by the state security court for the October 2002 murder of a US diplomat in Amman. Released from jail in 1999 as part of a general royal pardon by the Jordanian monarch, Zarqawi claimed the triple suicide bomb attacks on luxury Amman hotels on November 9 that killed 60 people.