Assassination of Abdullah I of Jordan

On 20 July 1951, King Abdullah I of Jordan was assassinated while visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. He had traveled to the city to deliver a eulogy at the funeral of former Lebanese Prime Minister Riad Al Solh, who had himself been assassinated days earlier, and to hold a prearranged meeting with Reuven Shiloah, head of Mossad, and diplomat Moshe Sasson. Abdullah attended Friday prayers at the mosque with his grandson, Prince Hussein. As he approached the entrance, a gunman fired on him from behind the mosque's main gate at close range, striking him three times in the head and chest; the king died instantly. The gunman was shot dead immediately afterward by one of Abdullah's bodyguards.

The assassin was identified as Mustafa Shukri Ashshu, a 21-year-old Palestinian tailor linked to the exiled former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, whom Abdullah had removed from his post in 1948 and barred from Jerusalem. Contemporary press accounts attributed the killing to a secret group referred to as "the Jihad," discussed in connection with the Muslim Brotherhood, while other reporting described Ashshu as a member of an armed force called the "Army of the Holy War" that sought an independent Palestinian Arab state. According to British Resident Alec Kirkbride, Ashshu was a "former terrorist" recruited for the assassination by Zakariyya Ukah, a livestock dealer and butcher. A revolver found on Ashshu's body was identified by a local coffee shop owner's son as belonging to his father, and a talisman bearing an Arabic inscription translating to "Kill, thou shalt be safe" was also found on him.

Jordan's government announced on 11 August 1951 that ten men would be tried in connection with the assassination; eight were ultimately sent to trial, including Colonel Abdullah at-Tell, a former Governor of Jerusalem, and Musa Ahmad al-Ayubbi, a Jerusalem merchant, both of whom had fled to Egypt and were tried and sentenced in absentia. General Abdul Qadir Pasha Al Jundi of the Arab Legion presided over the trial, which opened on 18 August 1951. Prosecutors alleged that at-Tell, living in Cairo since January 1950, had ordered that the assassin be killed immediately after the shooting to protect those who had organized the plot, and that at-Tell had maintained contact with the former Grand Mufti and his followers in Egypt and Gaza. At-Tell, a member of the Husseini family named Musa Abdullah Husseini, and three co-conspirators from Jerusalem were sentenced to death; on 28 August 1951 six men, two of them in absentia, received death sentences. On 6 September 1951, Musa Ali Husseini, 'Abid, Zakariyya Ukah, and Abd-el-Qadir Farhat were executed by hanging.

The assassination triggered a succession crisis in Jordan. Abdullah's elder son Talal, who had a troubled history with his father and was reported to suffer from mental illness, succeeded him as king, while younger son Prince Nayef briefly served as regent and was later linked to a failed attempt to seize the throne. Talal's son, Prince Hussein, who had witnessed the assassination, became the country's effective ruler as King Hussein at age sixteen.