Jordan Qaeda ex-adviser on hunger strike

The Jordanian former mentor of slain Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has gone on hunger strike to demand authorities move him to another prison, a Salafist leader said on Thursday. "Issam Abu Mohammed al-Maqdessi went on a hunger strike on Tuesday because he wants to move from his current jail in the northern governorate of Mafraq to a jail in Ruseifeh near Amman, which is much closer to his family," Mohammed Shalabi, known as Abu Sayyaf, told AFP. "The authorities rejected his legitimate demand. They know his mother is too old and ill to go to Mafraq to visit him." Abu Sayyaf said 40 other Salafist inmates in Mafraq "plan to go on hunger strike to support the demand of Maqdessi," who was sentenced to five years in jail in 2011 for recruiting people in Jordan to join the Taliban in Afghanistan. In 1992, Jordanian-born Zarqawi met Maqdessi and later joined his Sunni militant group, Jaish Mohammed (Mohammed's Army). They were detained in Jordan for five years for membership of an outlawed Islamist organisation but freed under a general amnesty in 1999. The two later fell out over "ideological differences" and aides said Maqdessi repeatedly denounced Zarqawi, who was killed in a US air strike northeast of Baghdad in 2006.