President Joe Biden should use his July 19 meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II to demand answers and true due process for an American citizen just given a 15-year prison sentence by a special military court.
The Jordanian-born, U.S.-raised and naturalized Bassem Awadallah once had held high Cabinet posts under King Abdullah, but he was arrested April 3 and charged with sedition in a murkily convoluted case involving a supposed rift between King Abdullah and his half-brother, Prince Hamzah. Hamzah himself was not charged, and 16 of the 18 alleged conspirators were released, but Awadallah was kept in custody and subjected to an unusually fast, non-public trial in which he was not allowed to call witnesses. The court convicted him and sentenced him on July 12.
