The top court in Jordan has dissolved the country’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Islamist movement, an official said Thursday. “The Court of Cassation [on Wednesday] issued a final verdict ruling that the Muslim Brotherhood group is dissolved… for failing to rectify its legal status under Jordanian law,” AFP quoted the unnamed official as saying.
The government in Amman had tolerated the group’s political arm for decades. Since 2014, authorities have considered it illegal, arguing its license was not renewed under a 2014 law on political parties.
The group continued to operate, but its relations with the Jordanian state deteriorated further after 2015 when the government authorized an offshoot group, the Muslim Brotherhood Association.
Security services closed the Brotherhood’s Amman headquarters and several regional offices in April 2016, transferring their ownership to the splinter group. The original Brotherhood described the step as political and took the case to court in a bid to retrieve the properties, only to see the ruling on Wednesday that ordered it dissolved.