Jordan releases soldier who killed 7 Israeli girls in 1997

A Jordanian soldier who killed seven Israeli schoolgirls in 1997 was released on Sunday after serving 20 years in prison, his family said.

"The authorities released Ahmad Dakamseh this Sunday around 1:00 am after he finished his jail term. He is now a free man," his cousin Mohammed Yahya Dakamseh said.

Ahmad Dakamseh was released from the Bab al-Hawa prison in Irbid, 90 kilometres north of the capital Amman.

In March 1997, he fired an automatic weapon at Israeli schoolgirls on a trip to the Jordan-Israel border, killing seven of them and wounding five others and a teacher. He had been sentenced to life imprisonment, which in Jordan is equivalent to 20 years.

A family member said he was aged 46 at the time of his release, which would have made him 26 when he was sentenced.

Previous reports said he was 30 at the time of the attack. Dakamseh, who hails from Irbid's Bani Kananah area near the Israeli border, was a married father-of-three at the time. His motives were never entirely clear, but he told the national security court at the time that he fired his weapon at the schoolgirls after they mocked him while he was praying.