to leave the country and on the morning of 14 March, he officially resigned and departed for Damascus, Syria with his family. Major-General Ali al-Hiyari, Abu Nuwar's chief rival in the Jordanian army, was appointed as Abu Nuwar's replacement, but on 20 April, he defected to Syria. Al-Hiyari claimed that prior to the incident at Zarqa and shortly after the forced resignation of al-Nabulsi's cabinet, palace officials had canvassed the army general staff to inquire about the officers' opinions regarding a change in direction of the new government away from the pan-Arabist policies of Egypt and Syria. Accordingly, when Abu Nuwar and the Free Officers voiced their refusal "to use the army against" the popular will in the country, palace officials laid out plans to royalist officers, including al-Hiyari, for a false flag operation at Zarqa. Al-Hiyari's account was widely reported throughout Jordan and the Arab world, and despite dismissal of the account by palace officials, it led to further public skepticism toward the official version of events regarding the alleged coup plot. Abu Nuwar consistently denied any betrayal of Hussein and claimed he was a "fall man", the victim of political intrigue in the kingdom in which his rivals sought to discredit him. At a press conference in Damascus, he stated that the entire incident was an overreaction by Hussein to sensational and false reports of a coup plot and that the incident was likely a preemptive coup by Hussein and the old guard, supported or engineered by US intelligence, against the main proponents of pan-Arab unity in Jordan. Rashid and Ma'an Abu Nuwar likewise strongly denied any kind of coup plot on their end. According to Pearson, the accounts of the Free Officers and al-Hiyari were lent further credence by the lack of evidence in the military trials against the alleged conspirators who were arrested, the light sentences that they were given and the eventual rehabilitation of the alleged conspirators, including Abu Nuwar, who were later reassigned to high-ranking posts in the state and military. Aftermath On 22 April, Abu Nuwar issued a radio statement from the Cairo-based Voice of the Arabs radio station denouncing Hussein. In coordination with Abu Nuwar, the following day, a Patriotic Congress consisting of Hussein's opposition was held in Nablus in the West Bank demanding major palace officials be dismissed, expulsion of the American ambassador and military attaché, rejection of the Eisenhower Doctrine,