Amman, Jordan ? Two men convicted of killing a U.S. aid official were hanged before dawn Saturday in Jordan’s first execution of al-Qaida-linked militants.

Libyan Salem bin Suweid and Jordanian Yasser Freihat were executed for the 2002 killing of Laurence Foley, a 60-year-old administrator with the U.S. Agency for International Development who was gunned down outside his Amman home. The murder plot was blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Bin Suweid was charged with shooting Foley, and Freihat was found guilty of driving the getaway car.

Jordan, a U.S. ally and the target of al-Qaida plots including hotel bombings that killed 60 people last year, has sentenced scores of militants to death in recent years, but executions have so far been carried out only against Islamists not linked to al-Qaida or other known terrorist groups.