Jordan: Nahed Hattar shot dead ahead of cartoon trial

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Jordan: Nahed Hattar shot dead ahead of cartoon trial

11:07 CAT | 25 Sep 2016

Al Jazeera / Nahed Hattar was facing trial for posting a cartoon on his Facebook account

A gunman has shot dead prominent Jordanian writer Nahed Hattar outside a court where he was facing charges for sharing a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam, state news agency Petra reported.

Hattar was struck by three bullets before the assailant was arrested on Sunday, Petra said. Witnesses said that a man had opened fire in front of the court in Amman’s Abdali district.

The 56-year-old Christian was arrested on August 13 after posting a caricature on his Facebook account that depicted a beared man in heaven smoking in bed with women, asking God to bring him wine and cashews.

It is not known who produced the cartoon.

Many Jordanian Muslims considered it offensive and against their religion. The authorities said Hatter violated the law by widely sharing the caricature.

He was charged with inciting sectarian strife and insulting Islam before being released on bail in early September.

‘Did not mean to offend’

The backlash against Hattar was immediate with Jordanian social media users lambasting the writer for purposely causing offence to Muslims.

Social media users also called on the government to question and arrest Hattar, and some attacked him for being Christian and a secularist.

Attempting to explain his motive for sharing the cartoon, Hattar said that he did not intend to cause offence to Muslims and wanted the cartoon to “expose” the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I did not mean to offend the believers. Instead, I was trying to expose how terrorist Daesh [the Arabic acronym for ISIL] militants and the Muslim Brotherhood envision God and heaven,” Hattar said in one explanation.

In a second explanation, Hattar said that “as a non-believer” he respected “the believers who did not understand the satire behind the cartoon”.

Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement in response to Hattar’s comments that called on the government to take strong measures against those who publish seditious material that undermined national unity.

Jordan is a leading member of the US-led coalition fighting ISIL in neighbouring Iraq and Syria, and was the target of a June 21 suicide bombing that killed seven border guards.

The kingdom has carried out air strikes targeting ISIL fighters and hosts coalition troops on its territory.

ISIL is considered a foreign illegal group under Jordanian law, and expressing any form of support for it is illegal.

‘A big mistake’

“This whole controversy was politically motivated by Hattar and his opponents took advantage of this issue to take revenge against him for his controversial and often offensive political stances,” Jordanian writer Fahad al Khitan told Al Jazeera after Hattar’s arrest.

Khitan described Hattar as a “fool” for “making a big mistake”.

Hattar was an outspoken supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has described those who oppose the Assad government as “terrorists” or “terrorist sympathisers”.

Hattar has also been an outspoken advocate of depriving Jordanians of Palestinian origin of their legal and civil rights in Jordan.

He has called for an exclusive, East-Bank Jordanian identity without its Palestinian component.

Source: Al Jazeera