Car Bomb Attack on Jordan’s Counterterrorism Chief

The Car Bomb Attack on Jordan’s Counterterrorism Chief is a February 2002 episode in Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s account of detention and counterterrorism in Jordan. The blast did not injure the official or his driver, but the ensuing investigation led to the detention of an innocent relative as a means of forcing a suspect to surrender. The episode links a failed attack to a punitive response directed at a family rather than at the missing suspect.

The Attack

The target was the director of Jordan’s Antiterrorism Department, whom Slahi describes as a leading target of the Islamic movement. A time bomb had been planted in the chassis of his car and was set to explode on the route between his home and office. On the morning of the attack, the director asked to stop at a shop to buy cigarettes. His driver went inside, and the director also got out of the vehicle. The bomb exploded while both men were away from it. Neither was harmed; the car was destroyed.

The Search and Retaliation

The investigation identified a suspect, but the secret police could not find him. Authorities instead arrested the suspect’s brother, whom Slahi describes as peaceful and uninvolved. Special Forces seized him in a crowded place, and he was detained and subjected to repeated abuse in an effort to make his brother turn himself in. The account presents this action as deliberate pressure on the family, not as evidence that the brother had taken part in the bombing.

The authorities allowed the family to visit the detained man so they could see his condition and be pressed to disclose the suspect’s whereabouts. Information eventually emerged that the suspect was hiding in the family home. An operation raided the house and arrested him; the detained brother was released the following day. His release thus followed the capture of the person sought, after the family had been used to bring about that result.

Significance in Slahi’s Account

The episode broadens Slahi’s account of Jordanian detention beyond his own treatment: it shows how a counterterrorism investigation could extend punishment to a relative when the person sought remained at large. The attack itself produced no casualties, yet its aftermath generated a separate detention whose stated purpose was to compel surrender. By setting the failed bombing beside the brother’s arrest and eventual release, Slahi emphasizes the distance between investigating a suspected crime and coercing information from someone who was not accused of committing it.