Jordan’s former Crown Prince was asked to “halt some movements and activities,” the country’s top general said Saturday, when other members of the royal family were arrested in a sweep believed to be a plot against the country’s King Abdullah II. had foiled.
General Yousef Huneiti, the army chief of staff, denied reports that Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, 41 – the king’s half brother – had been arrested along with nearly 20 others who had been arrested for “security reasons”.
However, the prince was asked to stay in his palace in Amman and not use social media.
Huneti said an investigation is still ongoing and the results will be made public “in a transparent and clear format”.
Those arrested included Sharif Hassan Ben Zaid, a member of the royal family, and US-educated Bassem Awadallah, a confidant of the king who long served as planning and finance minister.
“No one is above the law and Jordan’s security and stability are above all else,” Huneiti told the official Petra news agency.
Details of the plot are sparse, but arrests of top officials and members of the royal family are rare in Jordan, a key US ally wedged between Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
About 3,000 troops are stationed at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, an important rendezvous point for the fight against ISIS. The US provides approximately $ 425 million in military assistance to Jordan every year.
Awadallah, who resigned as chief of the royal court in 2008, was instrumental in economic reform.
Jordan’s powerful intelligence agency has a profound impact in public life, and that role has grown over the past year amid emergency laws enacted at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Citizen groups say these powers violate civil and political rights.
With pole wires