Alarabiya.net

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) demanded the release of a woman being held in Jordan for allegedly attempting to carry out a series of terrorist attacks in 2005, Reuters news agency reported.

In a broadcast carried by the Al-Bayan radio, which transmits in areas the group controls, ISIS described Sajida al-Rishawi as “our sister” asking for her release in exchange for the freedom of Kenji Goto, a Japanese hostage held by the militants.

Rishawi is a would-be Iraqi female suicide bomber on death row in Jordan in connection with triple hotel bomb attacks in Amman that killed 60 people on November 9, 2005.

Following her arrest, she appeared on state television confessing that she had taken part in the terror attacks.

“My husband detonated his bomb, and I tried to detonate mine but failed,” Rishawi said in a televised confession, CNN reported.

She said she is an Iraqi national who had been sent to Jordan to target hotels in Amman. In 2006, she was sentenced to death but a policy in Jordan imposed later that year suspended death sentences.

In the confession, al-Rishawi said, “My husband is the one who organized everything.”

The Amman bombings were claimed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq who was killed in a U.S. air raid there in June 2006.

His group was a precursor of the ISIS, and Rishawi's brother, Samir Atruss al-Rishawi, who was also killed in Iraq, was one of Zarqawi's lieutenants.

The voice in the ISIS broadcast revealed a new demand for the release Rishawi, saying the militants are no longer demanding money to save Goto’s life, but want "their sister" to be freed.