“Our punishment and revenge will be as huge as the loss of the Jordanians,” Mamdouh al Ameri, a government spokesman, said in a statement read on Jordanian TV on Tuesday.
Following through on the commitment to avenge the murder, Jordan has executed two convicts, including a female jihadist, following the killing of one of its air force pilots by Islamic State (IS) militants.
The woman, failed suicide bomber Sajida al-Rishawi, and al-Qaeda operative Ziyad Karboli – both Iraqi nationals – were hanged at dawn, officials said.
The executions came hours IS posted an online video claiming to show pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh being burned alive.
He was seized after crashing during an anti-IS mission over Syria in December.
Jordan had attempted to secure Lt Kasasbeh’s release in a swap involving Rishawi.
Al-Rishawi has been on death row for her role in a triple hotel bombing in the Jordanian capital Amman in 2005 that killed dozens. Over the past week, Jordan had twice offered to swap her for the pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh. However, officials have said his captors did not deliver proof he was still alive, and the swap never moved forward.
The 44-year-old Iraqi woman’s suicide belt did not detonate at the time of the Amman attack and she fled the scene, but was quickly arrested. After a televised confession, she recanted, but her appeal was turned down.
Al-Rishawi had family ties to the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda, a precursor of ISIS. Ziad Al-Karbuli was a former aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian Al Qaeda operative who was killed in 2006.
The 22-minute video, which Jordan said is authentic, brought a grisly end to speculation into the fate of Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, 26, who was captured when his plane crashed during a bombing mission in Syria Dec. 24. The video, which reports said could have been made more than a month ago, shows the pilot standing in a cage with a line of fuel leading to him, which is then ignited, causing him to burst into flames. Islamic State had previously sought to trade Al-Kaseasbeh for Sajida al-Rishawi, an Iraqi woman who is in a Jordanian prison for her role in a 2005 suicide bomb attack that killed 60 people in Amman.
BBC, Fox News
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