On Sunday, the Israeli authorities released a member of the Jordanian parliament, nearly two weeks after he was arrested on suspicion of trying to smuggle quantities of weapons from Jordan to the occupied West Bank, officials said.
The Israeli Internal Security Service (Shin Bet) confirmed that MP Imad Al-Adwan, who was not prosecuted by the Hebrew state, was handed over Sunday to the Jordanian authorities “to continue the investigation with him and complete the legal procedures.” The official spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriate Affairs, Ambassador Sinan Majali, confirmed the start of the ceremony of “the process of handing over MP Imad Al-Adwan by the Israeli authorities to the concerned Jordanian security authorities” on the King Hussein Bridge.
Al-Adwan was arrested at the Allenby (King Hussein) border crossing on April 22, and the Israeli security forces found 12 rifles and 194 pistols in his vehicle, as announced by the Internal Security Service (Shin Bet).
“Smuggling weapons, birds, electronic cigarettes and gold”
Investigations revealed that since February last year, the aggression had used his diplomatic passport 12 times to smuggle various commodities to Israel, including “birds, electronic cigarettes and gold,” according to the Shin Bet’s statement.
The security service also added that the 35-year-old aggression, a member of the Palestine Committee in the Jordanian Parliament, had smuggled weapons from Jordan to Israel since the beginning of this year.
The statement indicated that the Jordanian MP’s goal of the smuggling operations was “greed and obtaining large sums of money.”
For his part, Parliament Speaker Ahmed Al-Safadi said on Sunday that a decision to lift the immunity of Representative Al-Adwan was taken, based on a request from the State Security Court Prosecution.
Al-Safadi noted that the House of Representatives “in turn voted to lift the immunity of the deputy.”
Later to stop the aggression, and according to the Shin Bet, a number of Palestinians from the West Bank were arrested, and the Jordanian authorities were arrested on the other side of the border because they were linked to the aggression attempt to smuggle.
Adwan, a lawyer, is considered one of the youngest members of parliament and comes from one of the most famous clans in Jordan.
Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1994, becoming the second Arab country to take this step after Egypt in 1979.