Jordan said on Saturday that a police officer who went on a shooting spree, killing five people including two American police trainers, was psychologically disturbed and not linked to any radical Islamist group.Interior Minister Salameh Hamad told reporters the 29-year-old officer, Anwar Abu Zeid, had faced financial problems and was under severe mental stress before he began to fire at foreign trainers last Monday at the US-funded King Abdullah Training Centre near Amman.
“I announce to you that this incident was personal and isolated, and is not linked to any group whatsoever. We have no suspicions that he was linked to any extremist group,” he said.
“It is rooted in the shooter’s psychological and financial issue … he was in a stressed mental position.”
Security sources had earlier told Reuters on condition of anonymity there was growing evidence of radical Islamist influences on Abu Zeid.
The Americans killed were former members of the US military and were contracted to train police from regional allies such as Iraq and the Palestinian territories. A South African trainer and two Jordanian translators were also killed.
The killings took place on the 10th anniversary of al-Qaida suicide bombings that targeted three luxury hotels in the capital and killed 57 people. No group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack.
Abu Zeid, a pious young man, had grown more religious in recent months and told close relatives he wanted to leave his job because he was unable to tolerate working in an environment where American defence personnel were present, security sources said.
Senior officers confirmed that Abu Zeid had wanted to resign and had smuggled an AK and a pistol and a large cache of ammunition into the compound from his home in northern Jordan on the day of the shooting.
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