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Jordanian killer heralds new DIY terrorist threat

To many of his neighbors, Nabeel Jaoura was a gentleman: soft spoken, mild mannered and religious. He kept to himself, and never really discussed politics.

But deep inside, Jordanian security officials say, Jaoura was brooding, waiting for the day that he could avenge the death of his brothers in 1982 at the hands of Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon.

When Jaoura, a 38-year-old blacksmith and father of five, opened fire on Monday at a group of tourists in downtown Amman, killing a Briton and wounding six others, he became the latest in a new breed of terrorist, stirred by boiling anger and frustration, and taking matters into his own hands, security officials say.

While security officials are largely focused on organized terror groups like al-Qaeda, lone attackers like Jaoura present a new challenge. They are hard to track and even harder to stop, making them an especially difficult target for the police and security officials.

"No force on earth could have prevented an attack like this," said a senior Jordanian security official, who said Jaoura was surprisingly forthcoming under interrogation. "He was not an Islamist. He was isolated, and he did it on his own."

With tensions soaring high in much of the Middle East in the aftermath of Israel's war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the risk of copycat attacks has grown higher.

"Lone acts like this, done without any planning, reflect the general mood of anger and frustration here," said Muhammad Abu Rumman, an expert on Islamist movements at the Jordanian daily al Ghad. "There is a huge gap between the government and the people, and the government cannot control this sort of thing anymore."

The security official described Jaoura as lucid and sane. Two of his brothers had been killed in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he said, and Jaoura had harbored intentions of striking back ever since.

But with five children at home, Jaoura, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, had set his feelings aside to uphold his family responsibilities.
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