AMMAN: Jordan announced on Wednesday it was banning the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Islamist movement, accusing it of manufacturing and stockpiling weapons and planning to destabilize the kingdom. The move comes after authorities said they arrested 16 people, including members of the Brotherhood, over an alleged sabotage plot.

“It has been decided to ban all activities of the so-called Muslim Brotherhood and to consider any activity (carried out by it) a violation of the provisions of the law,” Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told reporters. “It has also been decided to close any offices or headquarters used by the group, even if it is in partnership with any other parties,” he added.

The Muslim Brotherhood has continued to operate in Jordan despite the country’s top court in 2020 ruling to dissolve it, with authorities turning a blind eye to its activities. The Brotherhood’s political wing, the Islamic Action Front, is Jordan’s main opposition party and the largest in parliament, having won 31 out of 138 seats in September elections.

Faraya said Jordan would also be “confiscating the group’s assets in accordance with relevant judicial rulings, prohibit the promotion of the group’s ideas under penalty of legal accountability, and consider membership in it a prohibited act”. The capital Amman is home to several Muslim Brotherhood offices. The group often issues statements and organizes rallies in solidarity with the Palestinians, especially since the start of the Gaza war in Oct 2023.

Faraya said any collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood was banned, as was publishing any content produced by the movement “and all its fronts and arms”. It was not immediately clear whether the ban applied to the Islamic Action Front. In a parliamentary session earlier this week, some legislators called to outlaw the activities of the Brotherhood and suspend MPs from the Islamic Action Front.

Jordan’s intelligence service on April 15 announced the arrests of 16 people on “terrorism” charges, accusing them, among other things, of manufacturing and possessing weapons such as rockets.

The Muslim Brotherhood has denied being aware of any plot, dismissing it as the acts of individuals in support of the Palestinian “resistance”. The group said it has always supported “Jordan’s security and stability”.

Faraya charged that the group’s members “are operating in the shadows and engage in activities that could undermine stability and security”. He added that authorities had found “explosives and weapons transported between Jordanian cities and stored in residential areas”, as well as covert missile manufacturing facilities and “training and recruitment operations” linked to the group. “No country can accept” such activities, the minister said.

Amman had tolerated the group for decades, but since 2014 authorities have considered it illegal, arguing its license was not renewed under a 2014 law. The Brotherhood argues that it had already obtained licenses under previous laws in the 1940s and 1950s. It continued to operate, but its relations with the state deteriorated after the government in 2015 authorized a splinter group, the Muslim Brotherhood Association.

The Brotherhood, banned in several other Arab countries, has had grassroots support in Jordan for decades. Ahmad Safadi, speaker of the Jordanian parliament’s lower house, said in response to Faraya’s announcement that Jordan respected the rule of law, and “no entity is outside the authority and power of the state”. He said the legislature would support “all steps announced by the interior minister to safeguard the kingdom’s security and stability in the face of suspicious attempts directed from abroad”. – AFP