JORDAN - Death sentence overturned

 An appeals court has struck down the conviction of a Jordanian-American condemned to death for conspiring to bomb tourist sites and ordered a retrial.

 The court ruled that military judges had "insufficient evidence" to convict Raed Hijazi, 33, of possessing arms and manufacturing explosives at the end of his trial in February.

 The appeal court delivered its ruling on Oct. 6, but it was released to journalists only on Wednesday. Legal sources involved in the case allowed The Associated Press to see 11 pages of the 43-page ruling, saying they were the most significant. They were printed on court stationery and bore the five judges' signatures.

 Hijazi -- who was born in San Jose, Calif., and carries Jordanian and American passports -- had pleaded innocent to charges including possession of arms and explosives, and conspiring to blow up Jordanian sites frequented by American and Israeli tourists during the New Year 2000 celebrations.

 In calling for a retrial, the judges said they found Hijazi was a conspirator who had "a final and categorical" agreement with 2 other convicts "to carry out a terrorist action against (Israeli) tourists in Jordan and attack buses which had transported them."

 The court did not rule on Hijazi's 2 fellow conspirators, whom the military court sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison with hard labor. They are Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, and Loa'i Mohammed Haj Bakr al-Saqa, a Syrian.

 The military court had dismissed charges that Hijazi belonged to an illegal organization, which the prosecution had identified as al-Qaida -- the terror group led by Osama bin Laden that is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The military judges found there was no evidence that al-Qaida had a presence in Jordan.