JERUSALEM— Increased pressure is mounting on the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to extradite self-confessed female Hamas operative Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi. She was responsible for engineering the 2001 Jerusalem pizzeria bombing that killed 16 people, including three Americans, half of whom were children.
Frimet and Arnold Roth, the parents of 15-year-old Malki Roth, a U.S. citizen who was killed in the Sbarro pizzeria bombing, conducted a virtual meeting on July 17, 2025, with Jeanine F. Pirro, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.
The U.S. State Department has a $5 million reward for information leading to al-Tamimi’s
Arnold Roth told Fox News Digital that “No senior figure from State has ever, in all the years of our fight for justice, agreed to speak with us. Their treatment of us and of the Tamimi case is deplorable. Victoria Nuland, then one of the top-ranking figures in the State Department. Nuland wrote to us in the names of President Biden and then-Sec of State Antony Blinken, and told us that the Tamimi case was quote ‘a foremost priority’ for the U.S. And that they would keep us informed. She then [they] ignored every follow-up letter that I sent her, and of course so said Biden and Blinken.”
Jordan’s government is a major recipient of U.S. Foreign Military Financing (FMF).
According to a January 2025 U.S. State Department fact sheet, “Since 2015, the Department of State has provided Jordan with $2.155 billion in FMF, which makes Jordan the third-largest global recipient of FMF funds over that time period. In addition, the Department of Defense (DoD) has provided $327 million to the Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF) under its 333 authority since 2018, making Jordan one of the largest recipients of this funding.”
Al-Tamimi reportedly boasted about her terrorist operation in the Arab media and called for more terrorism against Israel. “Of course. I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not. This is the path. I dedicated myself to jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were [in the 2001 attack on the Sbarro pizzeria]. This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That’s out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner,” she said in 2011, according to a MEMRI translation.
In 2017, the U.S. Justice Department publicly announced that it had charged her with the Jerusalem suicide bombing.
Fox News Digital sent multiple press queries to Jordan’s government and its embassies in Washington, D.C., and Tel Aviv.
