Nearly 24 years after a Hamas suicide bomber blew apart a crowded Sbarro pizzeria in the heart of Jerusalem, killing 16 people including seven children, the father of one victim is calling on the United States to end what he calls a shameful failure of justice.

Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki hy”d was among those murdered in the August 9, 2001, attack, is urging the Trump administration to force Jordan to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, the convicted Hamas terrorist who orchestrated the massacre.

Tamimi, a Jordanian national who at the time was a 21-year-old journalism student and the first woman to join Hamas’s terrorist ranks, personally scouted the pizzeria because of its popularity with Jewish children and its location near a yeshiva.

On the day of the attack, she escorted a bomber carrying a guitar case filled with explosives and nails to the restaurant’s entrance before walking away. The blast left families shattered across Israel and the U.S. Tamimi later confessed in an Israeli court and was sentenced to 16 life terms with a recommendation that she never be released.

But in 2011, Israel freed Tamimi as part of the deal to secure the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. She returned to Jordan to a hero’s welcome, later hosting a television program and openly glorifying terrorism in interviews, including boasting that she deliberately targeted Jewish children.

Three of the victims in the Sbarro attack were Americans, including Malki Roth. In 2017, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed charges against Tamimi and requested her extradition under a 1995 treaty with Jordan.

That same week, Jordan’s highest court declared the treaty invalid—a move U.S. officials later dismissed as baseless. Despite repeated State Department statements that the treaty remains binding, Jordan has continued to refuse extradition while receiving $1.7 billion annually in U.S. aid.

“For too long, U.S. taxpayer dollars have protected our daughter’s murderer, abetting her status as a kind of divinely sanctioned icon,” Roth wrote.

Roth accused successive U.S. administrations of treating his family “as a nuisance” while Jordan shields Tamimi for domestic political reasons. He pointed to President Donald Trump, saying he has the leverage to end the deadlock.

“President Trump can break this cycle by demanding Jordan extradite Tamimi as the treaty requires,” Roth wrote. “Justice—for Malki and other Americans murdered by jihadist terrorists—demands that Middle Eastern leaders rediscover some respect for the United States.”

Roth and his wife Frimet, who established the Malki Foundation in memory of their daughter, have spent years petitioning diplomats, lawmakers, and the media, but say they have been met with indifference.

“Jordan plays a cynical game, appeasing its Islamist base while reaping American aid and praise,” Roth charged. “It’s time the U.S. showed that breaking a treaty and harboring terrorists has consequences.”

For the families of the American victims, the case has become a litmus test of U.S. credibility in counterterrorism. While Jordan continues to present itself as a moderate ally, Roth says Washington’s tolerance of Amman’s defiance is a betrayal.

“Extraditing Tamimi would underscore that the U.S. prioritizes American life and honor over political deal-making,” he wrote.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)