Jordan holding Chattanooga shooter's uncle

The Jordanian intelligence services have been holding an uncle of the man who killed five US troops in Tennessee last week, his lawyer told AFP on Wednesday. "The intelligence services have been illegally detaining my client, university lecturer Assaad Ibrahim al-Haj Ali, since Friday," the day after the attack, Abdelkader al-Khatib said. Khatib said his client, who is of Palestinian origin, has joint Jordanian-US citizenship. He is the uncle of Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, 24, who killed four US marines and a sailor at two military centres in Chattanooga on Thursday, before dying himself in a shootout with police. Khatib said that Abdulazeez had stayed with his uncle and worked in his mobile telephone shop during a visit to Jordan lasting several months last year. He said the US authorities were interested in knowing more about that visit to better understand the gunman's state of mind. Washington has described the shooting as an "act of terrorism" but Khatib said the family had been surprised by his actions. "He was a normal person not a radical," he said. He said his client had intially been released after a few hours of questioning on Friday. But later in the day he was arrested and his home searched and laptop and mobile phone seized. "My client was arrested illegally... without any accusation," Khatib said. Amman has said that the gunman, who was born in Kuwait, did not have Jordanian citizenship, only the travel papers it issues to stateless Palestinians. Source: AFP