Longing for my daughter Malkie: Sbarro bombing, August 9, 2001 - by Frimet Roth

Why is my daughter's terrorist murderer still free in Jordan despite its extradition treaty with the US and our American citizenship?

Frimet Roth..
israelnationalnews.com..
08 August '20..
Link: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/284901

Nineteen years ago, our angel Malki was snatched from us in the Sbarro terror bombing.

Some may wonder how a pain can linger, oppress, ache and resist comfort for so long. Well, let me assure you, it can. And it does.

Sometimes, it feels more heart-wrenching to remember her life than it did when she was first murdered. There are so many family experiences and events that she has missed out on.

The bombing that took her life and those of 16 other innocent Jews was uniquely horrific. It has spawned numerous "miracle" legends about lucky people who came eerily close to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It has even inspired a minor writer to fabricate an entire interview with me which he included in his published memoir as well as in a Los Angeles Times op ed.

It is often the only one of many bloody attacks mentioned when the Second Intifada is revisited. Photographs of the site minutes after the explosion - it is the busiest intersection in Jerusalem's city center - are often reprinted. The sight of baby carriages and strewn body parts is emphasized.

But for some reason what doesn't attract press coverage is the travesty of justice that ensued.

To the bafflement of my husband and me, despite our years of effort to achieve justice for our Malki and the other victims, there’s remarkably little concern about how the mastermind, the main perpetrator of the Sbarro terror attack, is today a free woman.

Jordanian Ahlam Tamimi scouted Jerusalem's streets during the summer of 2001 for a target that would offer the greatest possible number of Orthodox Jewish children. Having traveled with him by public transport from Ramallah, she escorted her "weapon", a suicide bomber called Al Masri, on foot from East Jerusalem to the Sbarro location.

She boasts of how she spoke English to him during their walk in order to pass as tourists. Police were at that very hour combing the city's streets for a terrorist about whom they had been alerted.

After instructing him to wait ten minutes before detonating so that she could escape unharmed, she fled back to Ramallah. There she calmly reported the attack on the nightly Arab language news program where she worked as the on-camera presenter.

In front of cameras, Tamimi has smiled to learn how many children she murdered and expressed dismay that the number wasn't higher. She has urged audiences on Hamas TV and on social media to emulate her deeds. The depths of her evil are apparent to all.

My husband and I are astounded. Why is it that she is still free? Why does this not disturb people more than it appears to?

From the U.S. Congress, concern about how Jordanians deal with the fugitive terrorist in their midst - by Arnold Roth

Ahlam Tamimi, whose obscene freedom in Jordan is at the heart of the letter, is the Hamas terrorist who repeatedly confesses proudly to her central role in the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzera on August 9, 2001.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
05 May '20..

A group of Republican members of the US Congress has despatched a letter to Her Excellency Dina Kawar, Jordan's ambassdor to Washington. It's reported by JNS in a May 4, 2020 syndicated article headlined "Congress members push for extradition of wanted terrorist Ahlam Tamimi from Jordan".

The law-makers who co-signed it are Reps. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) who took the lead; Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.); Ted Yoho (R-Fla.); Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.); Brian Mast (R-Fla.); Scott Perry (R-Penn.); and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

Ahlam Tamimi, whose obscene freedom in Jordan is at the heart of the letter, is the Hamas terrorist who repeatedly confesses proudly to her central role in the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzera on August 9, 2001. Our daughter Malki, 15, was one of Tamimi's victims.

US Federal charges against Tamimi were announced in Washington by the Department of Justice on March 14, 2017.

Some extracts from the letter:

- [Tamimi] has been showered with acclaim by the students of the Arab world’s most important graduate school of journalism, the Amman-based Jordan Media Institute, who declared her to be their "success model"... For five years, she traveled widely and often to deliver public speeches throughout Jordan and in numerous Arab countries beyond Jordan’s borders. Her theme has always centered on promoting terror and terrorists.

- Today, appallingly, Tamimi is a media celebrity, the subject of wide popular admiration. She has appeared publicly side-by-side with prominent political figures and received extraordinary recognition in Jordan’s mainstream press and television media as a respected commentator and as an object of Jordanian national pride...

Referring to Jordan's blunt refusal to extradite Tamimi as required by the 1995 Jordan/US Extradition Treaty, the letter says

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The time has come for a grassroots campaign for Malki Roth as well - by Karen Harradine

The redoubtable Roths should not have to fight alone for justice for their daughter. The time has come for a global and concerted grassroots campaign to pressure Jordan into extraditing Tamimi.

Karen Harradine..
Algemeiner..
13 February '20..
Link: https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/13/a-grassroots-campaign-for-malki-roth/

Naama Issachar’s family is undoubtedly overjoyed to have her back home. Issachar owes her release from a Russian prison to over 80 organizations and people who effectively orchestrated a campaign for her freedom.

So why hasn’t a similar campaign been undertaken to bring justice to Malki Roth’s killer? Next year is the 20th anniversary of the Sbarro terrorist attack in which 15 innocents, including Malki, were murdered by Palestinian terrorists. The mastermind of this heinous crime, Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi, lives a free life in Jordan, feted as a celebrity. The Jordanian government and their king, Abdullah II, have repeatably ignored requests by the US to extradite Tamimi to face overdue justice in an American court (Malki was an American citizen).

Malki’s parents, Arnold and Frimet Roth, have spent almost two decades living with the pain of grief, compounded by the frustration and hurt arising from a culture of silence surrounding the extradition of Tamimi.

The redoubtable Roths should not have to fight alone for justice for their daughter. The time has come for a global and concerted grassroots campaign to pressure Jordan into extraditing Tamimi. The Israeli government needs to play its part, too. Why won’t the Israeli government pressure Jordan into honoring its obligation to extradite Tamimi? What are they afraid of?

The Sbarro bomber trashes the ruler who protects her from the FBI - by Arnold Roth

How confident of her position Tamimi must be if she can launch a public attack on the monarch who, more than anyone else, is the reason she is free today and living under his protective rule. She evidently knows things about public opinion in Jordan that don't get well reported in the West. Then again, she might not fully realize that if King Hussein, who made the 1995 treaty with Clinton, were alive today (he died in 1999), Tamimi would today be in chains somewhere inside the US penal system? Thanks to his son and the law courts that serve him, she's outrageously free enough to publish op eds, to appear on pan-Arab TV networks and to be the poster child for Islamist bigotry, terrorism and the redemptive power of murdering Jewish children.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
15 December '19..

The Hamas terrorist who chose a Jerusalem pizzeria to bomb because of the many Jewish children inside whom she sought to kill - and succeeded - lives free today in Jordan. In an absolute monarchy, this can only be because Jordan's King Abdullah II wants it that way.

We suggest below why this shocking reality (a) is irrational from the king's standpoint, given what the bomber's values and goals are; and (b) involves much blurring and denying of facts and some disgraceful pretending.

The continuing freedom of the bomber, Ahlam Tamimi, is an almost completely unreported scandal. Though she’s officially regarded as an on-the-run fugitive by the US Department of Justice and is one of the FBI's 28 most wanted terrorists (there's an FBI website that lists them), she's not undercover, disguised or in hiding. She lives free-as-a-bird in the capital city of a country ruled by a close strategic ally of the United States.

Starting in January 2018, the US State Department began offering a reward of "up to $5 Million" for the capture and conviction of this Jordanian Islamist. But as we have come to understand, so long as she stays within Jordan's borders, she is safe from the US legal system.

That's not how the US officially looks at this; all its relevant agencies say she needs to be handed over to US law enforcement and taken to a Federal courthouse in Washington for trial.

So why doesn't that happen?

It's not because she's hard to find.

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Dear Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Is it that their questions about their murdered child simply aren't worth the trouble of acknowledging?

We're baffled and pained by every aspect of how the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has conducted itself in this exceedingly shabby affair. We're especially troubled by how its leadership disdains us and our questions and acts as if we, our questions and our murdered child simply don't exist or aren't worth the trouble of acknowledging.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
24 November '19..

No one from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy bothered to respond to us or any of our emails, tweets or opinion pieces (one on the home page of the Times of Israel, one on our blog) in relation to their giving an award called "Scholar-Statesman" to Jordan's ruler this past Thursday night.

The issue concerns how Jordan, an absolute monarchy, brazenly shields a mass murderer who happens also to be the killer of our child, a US citizen.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan's embassy in Washington, where the ambassador Dina Kawar blocks us on Twitter, has just published the kind of report we have learned to expect, emphasizing and re-emphasizing King Abdullah II's wisdom, wise policies and how he "confronts" extremism.

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Jordan's King Abdullah II to be honored for profound commitment to peace and moderation. Why?

There's obviously not a syllable here that deals with how King Abdullah II has demeaned the extradition treaty that his late father King Hussein entered into with the Clinton Administration in 1995. Nor about how Jordan rebuffs ongoing efforts by the United States via its Department of Justice and State Department to effect the extradition of Ahlam Tamimi, confessed bomber, Hamas terror agent, Jordanian jihadist/celebrity and the killer of our teenage daughter Malki, to a Federal court in Washington where serious terrorism charges involving American victims await her. Nor about those American victims. Or their "American interests".

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
18 November '19..

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy issued this announcement today:

The Washington Institute to Honor Jordan's King Abdullah II ibn Al Hussein with Prestigious 'Scholar Statesman Award'

November 17, 2019
Washington, D.C.‬ – The Washington Institute for Near East Policy will present its 2019 Scholar-Statesman Award to King Abdullah II ibn Al Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan at a gala event in New York City ‪on November 21, 2019‬, the research organization announced today. The Institute will also pay tribute to Institute Trustees Merryl and James Tisch, leaders in the business, educational, and philanthropic communities.
"It is our great privilege to recognize His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan for his courageous leadership and profound commitment to peace and moderation," stated Institute leaders Executive Director Robert Satloff, President Shelly Kassen, and Chairman James Schreiber. "In a region troubled by violence and extremism, the King has shown over two decades on the throne that a mix of compassion and strength is a recipe for visionary statesmanship."

King Abdullah II has been the head of Jordan's monarchy since 1999, following the passing of his father, King Hussein. Throughout his reign, he has prioritized investing in the potential of his people, countering violent extremism, and working to expand the prospects for peace in the Middle East. The 41st generation direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, King Abdullah II has been recognized around the world for efforts to advance harmony and peace within Islam and among the world's great religions.

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House Speaker Pelosi, please rectify this travesty of justice - by Frimet Roth

Instead of flattering him, Ms. Pelosi, use your clout to insist he abide by the extradition treaty his father signed and ratified in 1995. Tamimi has evaded the rule of law for long enough. You, as a lawmaker, can rectify this travesty of justice.

Frimet Roth..
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly..
20 October '19..

Our heartache deepened as yet another US Congressional delegation flew to Amman, Jordan, this weekend to meet with and praise the terror-abetting King Abdullah II ["19-Oct-19: House Speaker Pelosi led an official visit today to the chief protector of our child's killer"]

Notwithstanding the demands of the impeachment inquiries, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi found the time to present the Jordanian dictator with the same adulation she lavished on him in March 2019 and then again in April 2019 in Washington DC.

US leaders on both sides of the aisle persist in ignoring the fact that the object of their friendship steadfastly rejects the US Department of Justice's demand for the extradition of mass murderer, Ahlam Tamimi.

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