Jordan: Court considers charging former minister Abu Audeh

Note: This is an updated version of the post that I put up on this topic at 12:40 p.m. today.

I got home to Virginia, from Jordan, late last night. This morning I learned that my longtime friend Adnan Abu Audeh (also transliterated as Abu-Odeh) was this morning threatened with being prosecuted by Jordan’s fairly infamous “state security court” on the basis of two charges: One was “threatening national unity” and the other was, in Arabic, “Italat al-Lisan”, literally, having too long of a tongue (toward the status of the king), that is, lèse majesté.
Abu Audeh’s daughter Lama Abu Audeh, who teaches at Georgetown University Law School in Washington DC, tells me that the “threatening national unity” charge carries a sentence of up to three years imprisonment.
Adnan Abu Audeh is a very accomplished and prominent Jordan citizen. He was Minister of Information in the 1970s, later going on to become Head of the Royal Court for several years under the late King Hussein. After King Abdullah II succeeded Hussein in 1999, he appointed Abu Audeh as a political advisor. But he removed him from that position after Abu Audeh published a book (with the U.S. Institute of Peace Press in Washington DC) that analyzed the relationship inside Jordan between citizens whose families were originally from east of the River Jordan– that is, from within the present-day territory of the Kingdom– and those whose families were originally from west of the river, in the “West Bank” area that is claimed by the Palestinians.
Jordan had annexed the West Bank to itself after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, though no other governments except Britain and Pakistan ever recognized that act of annexation. At that point, West Bankers were given Jordanian citizenship. In 1988, however, King Hussein laid down Jordan’s claim to exercizing any form of sovereignty in the West Bank.
Abu Audeh is of West Bank origin, having been born and brought up in Nablus.
In recent years, he has made a great contribution to international understanding and global political life through his service on the board of the International Crisis Group, a very respected research organization whose board also includes many other high-level political personalities from around the world.
Lama Abu Audeh told me that today, after being interrogated, and told that the judge would now try to establish a case for his indictment, her father was allowed to return home. (I wonder what the evidence might be. Will there be an anthropometric measuring of the length of his tongue, I wonder?) I sincerely hope that if he is taken into custody at any point he will not be subjected to the kinds of torture that are reliably reported by Amnesty International and other bodies to occur within the prisons run by the state security apparatus. (See some of the reports available through this Amnesty portal.)
The fact that the Jordanian regime is even considering charging a West-Bank-origin citizen of such distinction and prominence as Adnan Abu Audeh on such flimsy charges indicates to me that the political situation in the country must be much more fragile than I had already, on the basis of my recent trip there, judged it to be. I confess that while I was there, I spent just about all my time cocooned in the conference environment and had almost no time to talk with local friends… (If I had, Abu Audeh would certainly have been one whom I contacted. Now I deeply regret not having done so.) However, just from a few things I noticed while in the country, the situation did already seem to be quite fragile.
I can quite understand that Jordanians, whose country is sandwiched between Palestine and Iraq and contains large bodies of refugees from both areas– including a well-established community of West-Bank-origin people who now make up more than 60% of Jordan’s citizenry– must be feeling very concerned indeed about the fallout inside their country from the oppression, hopelessness, and political violence that continue to mark the situations in both those weighty neighbors. But surely, to threaten to indict a person like Adnan Abu Audeh on the basis merely of secretly compiled charges of speech crimes does nothing to build trust within the country and ensure the longterm wellbeing of its people?
The matters Mr. Abu Audeh has raised in public about the nature of the relationship between East Bankers and West Bankers are surely a legitimate subject for public discussion, particularly if that discussion is held in the measured, non-confrontational way in which he discusses them.
If this investigation continues and charges are indeed brought against him, the effect on civil discourse in Jordan will be a chilling one, and citizens who have legitimate grievances against the regime may well feel more inclined to pursue them through violence. Charging Adnan Abu Audeh with speech crimes seems like a recipe only for increased tension and violence.