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Jerry Seib: Will ISIS Execution of Jordanian Unite Opposition?

CAIRO (AP) — A video showing Islamic State militants burning a captive Jordanian pilot to death brought an outpouring of grief and rage across the Middle East on Wednesday, its brutality horrifying a region long accustomed to violence.

Political and religious leaders offered angry denunciations and called for blood, while at least one wept on air while talking about the killing of 26-year-old Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh, whose F-16 crashed in Syria in December during a U.S.-led coalition raid on the extremist group.

The head of Sunni Islam's most respected seat of learning, Egypt's Al-Azhar, said the militants deserve the Quranic punishment of death, crucifixion or the chopping off of their arms for being enemies of God and the Prophet Muhammad.

"Islam prohibits the taking of an innocent life," Ahmed al-Tayeb, Al-Azhar's grand sheik, said in a statement, adding that by burning the pilot to death, the militants violated Islam's prohibition on the mutilation of bodies, even during wartime.

Capital punishment is used across much of the mostly Muslim Middle East for crimes like murder and drug smuggling. Death by hanging is the preferred method, but beheadings are routinely carried out in Saudi Arabia. In Iran and Pakistan, stoning to death as punishment for adultery exists in the penal code but is rarely used.

Burning to death as legal punishment, however, is unheard of in the contemporary Middle East, and a prominent Saudi cleric, Sheik Salman al-Oudah, wrote Wednesday that it is prohibited by Islam, citing what he said was a saying by the Prophet Muhammad that reserves for God alone the right to punish by fire in the after-life.

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A screengrab from an ISIS video reporting to show Jordanian Pilot Muath al-Kasasba prior to being bu …

However, Hussein Bin Mahmoud, an Islamic State-linked theologian, claimed on one of the group's social media forums that two of the Prophet Muhammad's revered successors ordered similar punishment for Arab renegades in the seventh century. Al-Azhar says the claim is unsubstantiated.

While acknowledging the prophet's saying that God alone punishes by fire, Bin Mahmoud cited a Quranic verse that requires Muslims to punish their enemies in kind. Since U.S.-led airstrikes "burn" Muslims, he argued, the IS group must burn those behind the raids.

Iyad Madani, the leader of the 57-nation, Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the world's largest bloc of Muslim countries, condemned the killing.

It "utterly disregards the rights of prisoners Islam has decreed, as well as the human moral standards for war and treatment of prisoners," a statement from Madani said. It is sad to see "the depth of malaise" in parts of the Middle East, along with the "intellectual decay, the political fragmentation and the abuse of Islam, the great religion of mercy."

Condemnations quickly came from Gulf Arab nations, all of which are close U.S. allies.

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Supporters and family members of Jordanian pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh express their anger of his …

The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, condemned the killing and reaffirmed his nation's commitment to fighting terrorism and extremism. "This heinous and obscene act represents a brutal escalation by the terrorist group, whose evil objectives have become apparent," he said.

The UAE is one of the most visible Arab members in the U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State group, which also includes Jordan. Bahrain, a Gulf state that is home to the U.S. 5th Fleet, denounced the killing as "despicable," and Kuwait's emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, blasted the killing as "criminal" and "vicious."

Qatar's Foreign Ministry also condemned the "criminal act contravening the tolerant principles of the Islamic faith, human values and international laws and norms." The tiny but very rich Gulf nation hosts the regional command center coordinating coalition airstrikes.

In predominantly Muslim Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the killing an act of "savagery" that had no place in Islam.

"There is no such thing in our religion ... and they have nothing to do with Islam," he said.

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Supporters and family members of Jordanian pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh express their anger of his …

Iran, which has aided both Iraq and Syria against the IS group, said the killing of the pilot was an "inhuman" act that violated the codes of Islam, according to a statement by Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose government had tried to free two Japanese nationals before they were beheaded by the Islamic State group last month, also condemned the pilot's killing.

"Such an act of terrorism is outrageous and impermissible and causes me nothing but strong indignation. Thus I express resolute condemnation," he said in a statement. "We must never give in to terrorism."

Religious and political leaders have condemned past atrocities committed by the Islamic State group, including the beheading of foreign journalists and aid workers, and the mass killing of captured Iraqi and Syrian soldiers.

But the killing of al-Kaseasbeh, who had been the subject of intense negotiations over a possible swap with an al-Qaida prisoner on death row in Jordan, seems to have hit much closer to home. The prisoner, an Iraqi woman convicted of involvement in a triple hotel bombing in Amman in 2005, was executed along with another al-Qaida prisoner at dawn on Wednesday.

The pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper led its coverage of the pilot's killing with a one-word front-page banner: "Barbarity."

"How many Syrian al-Kaseasbehs are there?" asked an article in the left-leaning Lebanese daily Assafir. "How many ... are there, whose names we are ignorant of, slaughtered by the Islamic State and their brothers? How many Syrian al-Kaseasbehs have fallen in the past four years ... without news headlines on the television channels?"

Jordanian politician Mohammed al-Rousan wept on television as he described watching al-Kaseasbeh's death, saying even people attuned to violence could not bear to see a man burned alive.

But in an instant his grief turned to rage.

"Let's use the same methods as them!" he shouted during the interview with Lebanon's al-Mayadeen TV. "Let's kill their children! Let's kill their women!"

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Associated Press writers Adam Schreck in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Diaa Hadid in Beirut, Maamoun Youssef in Cairo and Suzan Frazer in Ankara contributed to this report.

AFP Videographics
Chemical weapons disposal

PUEBLO, Colo. (AP) — The United States is about to begin destroying its largest remaining stockpile of chemical-laden artillery shells, marking a milestone in the global campaign to eradicate a debilitating weapon that still creeps into modern wars.

The Pueblo Chemical Depot in southern Colorado plans to start neutralizing 2,600 tons of aging mustard agent in March as the U.S. moves toward complying with a 1997 treaty banning all chemical weapons.

"The start of Pueblo is an enormous step forward to a world free of chemical weapons," said Paul Walker, who has tracked chemical warfare for more than 20 years, first as a U.S. House of Representatives staffer and currently with Green Cross International, which advocates on issues of security, poverty and the environment.

The work starts less than a year after chlorine gas killed 13 people in Syria in April 2014. International inspectors concluded last month that the gas had been used as a weapon.

Before the chlorine attack, 1,400 people were killed in a 2013 nerve gas attack in Syria, the U.S. said.

Pueblo has about 780,000 shells containing mustard agent, which can maim or kill, blistering skin, scarring eyes and inflaming airways. Mustard agent is a thick liquid, not a gas as commonly believed. It's colorless and almost odorless but got its name because impurities made early versions smell like mustard.

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In this Jan. 29, 2015 photo, protective suits for workers used in chemical munitions destruction han …

After nightmarish gas attacks in World War I, a 1925 treaty barred the use of chemical weapons, and the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention set a 2012 deadline to eradicate them. Four nations that acknowledged having chemical weapons have missed the deadline: the U.S., Russia, Libya and Iraq.

The cost of safely destroying the weapons, and concerns about public health and the environment, have slowed the process, experts say. Violence in Iraq also has been an obstacle.

Libya expects to finish in 2016 and Russia in 2020, according to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention. Iraq's completion date is unknown.

The U.S. amassed 30,600 tons of chemical weapons, both mustard agent and deadly nerve agent, much of it during the Cold War. The Army described them as a deterrent, and the U.S. never used them in war.

Nearly 90 percent of the U.S. stockpile has been eliminated at depots in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon, Utah and Johnson Atoll in the Pacific, mostly by incineration.

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In this Jan. 29, 2015 photo, project manager Steve Bird holds an inert 105mm shell as he demonstrate …

Coloradans worried, however, about mercury vapor from incineration, said Irene Kornelly, a member of the Pueblo Citizens Advisory Commission, a liaison group established by Congress. The opposition in Colorado and in Kentucky, where chemical weapons are stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond, prompted Congress to order alternatives.

The Army will use two methods for the Pueblo stockpile. In March, the first of an estimated 1,400 shells that are leaking or otherwise damaged will be placed in a sealed steel chamber with walls up to 9 inches thick. Explosives will tear open the shells, and the mustard agent will be neutralized with chemicals.

The remaining hundreds of thousands of shells will be run through a partially automated, $4.5 billion plant starting in December or January. It will dismantle the shells, neutralize the mustard agent in water, and then add bacteria to digest and convert the remaining chemicals. The end product can be disposed of at a hazardous waste dump.

The plant can process up to 60 shells an hour, but the explosion chamber can destroy just six shells a day.

Pueblo expects to finish the job in 2019 — more than 55 years after some of the shells there were produced.

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In this Jan. 29, 2015 photo, inert 105mm shells sit in the entry point of the explosive destruction …

Blue Grass won't start destroying weapons until 2016 or 2017, finishing in 2023, Army spokeswoman Kathy DeWeese said. All told, it's costing about $11 billion to destroy remaining U.S. chemical weapons.

Blue Grass has 523 tons of chemical weapons, only about one-fifth as many as Pueblo, but it has nerve agent, and some of the mustard agent is so old it has solidified and is more difficult to deal with, DeWeese said.

Officials who oversee the Pueblo operation insist it is safe, citing years of careful planning and training, as well as the remote location — an empty expanse of sagebrush some 15 miles from the city's outskirts.

Army Lt. Col. Mike Quinn declined to discuss the specifics of security at the 36-square-mile depot, but signs warn, "Use of deadly force authorized."

Kornelly said she has no remaining concerns, but she's not ready to celebrate.

"I think once we start seeing the weapons go through, there'll be a feeling of accomplishment," she said. "Right now, everyone's on pins and needles."

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Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP.