AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan on Saturday executed 10 prisoners with ties to Islamist extremism who had carried out five shootings and a bombing since 2003, a government spokesman said.
Among those killed in the attacks were a British tourist, an outspoken Jordanian critic of Islamist extremism and members of the Jordanian security forces.
The executions on Saturday were the first since Jordan began a crackdown on Islamist extremists two years ago, in response to the killing of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot by the Islamic State. Jordan is part of an American-led military coalition fighting the Islamic State, which holds territory in Syria and Iraq.
The prisoners were hanged at dawn on Saturday at Swaqa Prison, about 47 miles south of the capital, Amman, said the government spokesman, Mohammad al-Momani. All had links to Islamist militant groups, Mr. Momani said.
Five other prisoners were executed for crimes unrelated to terrorism, including incest, Mr. Momani said in a statement carried by the state news agency, Petra.
The prisoners executed Saturday for terrorism convictions had been involved in six different episodes, including a 2003 bombing attack that killed 19 people at Jordan’s Embassy in Iraq and the September 2016 shooting of Nahed Hattar, a writer, on the steps of an Amman courthouse.
Also listed were a 2006 shooting attack on a group of tourists at a theater in Amman in which a 30-year-old British man was killed; a December 2015 shooting that killed two police officers; a March 2016 shootout between the police and Islamic State militants in which an officer was killed; and a June 2016 attack by a lone gunman on an office of Jordan’s intelligence agency that killed five people.
Mr. Hattar, the writer, had been on trial for posting a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam on social media when an assailant killed him outside the courthouse. The gunman was a former mosque prayer leader motivated by anger over the cartoon, officials said at the time.
Saad Hattar, a cousin of the victim’s, said Saturday that while the killer was punished, those who instigated such attacks with hateful statements were not.
“The murderer was just a tool, and our society needs the uprooting of the ideology and the culture behind him,” said Mr. Hattar, a journalist.
A local analyst, Labib Kamhawi, said he believed that the executions were meant to send a triple message. They signaled to potential attackers that they could expect harsh punishment and reminded Jordanians buckling under price increases that their country faces a serious security threat, Mr. Kamhawi said.
The message to the outside world, particularly the Trump administration, is that “Jordan is on top of things and that Jordan can be considered one of the allies in fighting terrorism,” Mr. Kamhawi said.
The human rights group Amnesty International said the “horrific scale and secrecy” surrounding Saturday’s executions was shocking.
“This is a major step backward for both Jordan and efforts to end the death penalty, a senseless and ineffective means of administering justice,” said Samah Hadid, deputy director of Amnesty International’s regional office in Beirut, Lebanon.
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