The news from Beiurt today indicates that Shaker Youssef Al-Absi, the fugitive leader of the Fatah al-Islam militants was killed as he was trying to flee the Nahr el Bared Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon. Now his brother Abdel Razzak el-Absi, a surgeon in Amman is asking the Jordanian authorities to allow the family to bury this martyr in Jordan.
Al-Absi family's request is unlikely to find a listeing ear in Amman especially as Al-Absi was high on Jordan's most-wanted terror list. A military court sentenced him to death in absentia in July 2004, along with al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, for their roles in the 2002 slaying of a U.S. diplomat in Amman. Additionally, Al-Absi was also implicated in other planned terror plots in Jordan. Six months ago, Jordanian police engaged in a gun battle with two militants in the northern city of Irbid, killing one and arresting another. The arrested militant later confessed that al-Absi had sent the pair to carry out terror attacks in Jordan.
So why would Jordan want to allow Al-Absi's body to buried in Jordan? For humanitarian causes his brother thinks. “My brother has chosen the strict Islamic way because he was desperate and depressed", Abdel Razzak said. On the other hand, one might wonder whether Shaker Al-Absi was humanitarian enough when he and his group started the conflict with the Lebanese Army by attacking and slaughtering 27 soldiers during their sleep, or when his organization Fatah al-Islam bombed 2 buses and killed 3 innocent Christian Lebanese and wounded another 20 in the Ain Alaq town of the northern Metn province in Mount Lebanon, or when Fatah al-Islam robbed a Lebanese bank the night before the conflict started and stole $125,000. So who was Shaker Al-Absi? Was he "martyr" or a "murderer"? If he was a "martyr" as his family believes then there is no doubt that Jordan should let him be buried in its holy soil, however if he was a murderer then the last thing that we need is another fanatic misguided symbol for our youth to remember.
