In 1997, a group of Israeli schoolgirls visited what was known as "Peace Island" between Jordan and Israel. A Jordanian soldier opened fire on them, massacring seven 11-year old girls.
Al Arabiya reports that the Muslim Brotherhood of Jordan, fresh off of its more extremist turn, is now urging Jordan's king to pardon the murderer, Ahmad Daqamseh.
But before you think that this is just a fringe extremist group that can be ignored, it is worth recalling that last year a much more heterogeneous group of Jordanians demanded the exact same thing. And they included the president of the Arab Human Rights Organization and the head of the Jordan Bar Association. They justified their demand by saying that "pardoning Daqamseh will have a great effect on people."
As I wrote then, let's hope that King Abdullah will remain as aghast at this crime as his father was and let the killer rot. At the time, King Hussein went to Israel to pay his condolences to the families and truly condemned this act, not like the fake "condemnations" that we are used to hearing from Palestinian Arab leaders.
