Reuters– Jordan on Wednesday executed by hanging a jailed Iraqi woman militant whose release had been demanded by the Islamic State group that burnt a captured Jordanian pilot to death, a security source said on Wednesday.
Responding to the killing of the pilot, whose death was announced on Tuesday, the Jordanian authorities also executed another senior Al-Qaida prisoner sentenced to death for plots to wage attacks against the pro-Western kingdom in the last decade.
Sajida al-Rishawi, the Iraqi woman militant, was sentenced to death for her role in a 2005 suicide bomb attack that killed 60 people. Ziyad Karboli, an Iraqi Al-Qaida operative, who was convicted in 2008 for killing a Jordanian, was also executed at dawn, the source said.
A video the group released late Tuesday purportedly shows the pilot being burned alive in a cage. Jordan vowed “strong, earth-shaking and decisive” response to what it called a “barbaric act.”
“The revenge will be as big as the calamity that has hit Jordan,” army spokesman Colonel Mamdouh al Ameri said in a televised statement confirming the death of the pilot, who was seized by Islamic State in December.
Jordan had offered to swap al-Rishawi for the pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh. However, the militants did not deliver proof he was still alive.
Jordan has been mounting air raids in Syria as part of the U.S.-led alliance against Islamic State insurgents.
The fate of Kasaesbeh, a member of a large tribe that forms the backbone of support for the Hashemite monarchy, has gripped Jordan for weeks and provoked rare protests against King Abdullah over the government’s handling of the crisis.
The king cut short a visit to the United States to return home following word of Kasaesbeh’s death. In a televised statement, he said the pilot’s killing was an act of “cowardly terror” by a deviant group that has no relation to Islam.
Islamic State had demanded al-Rishawi’s release in exchange for the life of Japanese hostage Kenji Goto. The beheading of Goto, a veteran war reporter, was shown in a video released by the group on Saturday.
The Jordanian military might also escalate attacks on Islamic State, said retired air force General Mamoun Abu Nowar. “We might even see in a couple of days the rate of sorties increased dramatically. We might have some special operations against their leadership too,” he said.
In the Islamic State video, Kasaesbeh is interviewed, describing the mission he was due to carry out before his jet crashed. The video also showed footage of the aftermath of air strikes, with people trying to remove civilians from debris.
A man resembling Kasaesbeh is shown inside the cage with his clothes dampened, apparently with flammable liquid, and one of the masked fighters holds a torch, setting alight a line of fuel which leads into the cage.
The man is set ablaze and kneels to the ground.
Fighters then pour debris, including broken masonry, over the cage which a bulldozer then flattens, with the body still inside. The video showed a desert setting similar to previous videos of killings.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday condemned the murder of Mouath al-Kasaesbeh by Islamic State militants, saying the apparent burning of the Jordanian air force pilot alive was an appalling act.
“The Secretary-General condemns the killing of … Kasaesbeh by Daesh (Islamic State), a terrorist organization with no regard for human life,” Ban’s press office said in a statement.
It added that Ban “urges all governments to strengthen their efforts to combat the scourge of terrorism and extremism within the bounds of their human rights obligations.”