Interpol Asked to Help Find Suspect in TWA Bombing

Police hunted Friday for the woman suspected of planting under her plane seat the bomb that ripped open a TWA jet and killed four Americans.

“We’re trying to track down anyone who may have noticed the woman on the Cairo-Athens leg of the flight,” said Nikos Kokkinakis, a senior Greek security police officer.

“We’ve sent out a signal to trace her through Interpol (the international police organization) but don’t expect any information back immediately,” he said.

He said the woman sought in the attack on Wednesday’s Trans World Airlines Flight 840, identified as May Elias Mansour, may have concealed plastic explosives in the life preserver under seat 10F during a Cairo-to-Athens flight, about eight hours before the Boeing 727 was torn by the blast while returning to Athens from Rome with 122 people aboard.

Officials say the bomb exploded under seat 10F, where one of the four Americans killed, Alberto Ospina, was sitting.

In Rome, the Italian news agency ANSA said passengers on the Cairo-to-Athens flight had told authorities that the woman in seat 10F kept her tray table down throughout the flight, and that investigators believed this was done to conceal her actions.

The pilot later told reporters the crew does not customarily check all life preservers between flights.

Searched Thoroughly

The prime suspect in the TWA bombing underwent a body search and thorough luggage search before she boarded the plane at the last minute in Cairo, airline officials said. The Boeing 727 flew from Cairo to Athens, then to Rome and back to Athens.

Italian police have said the woman is a known terrorist, but Kokkinakis said, “We were never alerted that she was a suspected terrorist. According to our records she hadn’t been in Greece before.”

Kokkinakis said Mansour left the TWA plane at Athens, entered the transit lounge immediately and waited there six hours before boarding a Middle East Airlines flight that took off for Beirut minutes before Capt. Richard F. Petersen landed the bombed plane. Earlier reports had said she was still in the transit lounge when the TWA jet landed.

In Beirut, officials of Middle East Airlines, the Lebanese national carrier, would not confirm that Mansour was aboard Flight 254 from Athens on Wednesday.

Denial Issued

A statement denying involvement in the bombing, purportedly signed by Mansour, was distributed Friday to reporters in the northern Lebanon city of Tripoli.

It said she “had nothing to do with” planting the bomb and would sue everyone “who falsely accused” her of it.

There was no way to determine whether the statement was authentic.

A Christian Beirut radio station, the Voice of Lebanon, said Mansour had returned to Lebanon and was a member of the Revolutionary Brigades terrorist group.

The radio quoted unidentified sources as saying she is the widow of a Druze militiaman known as Abu Nisrin, who was killed last year in Lebanon’s civil war. The Druze are an offshoot sect of Islam. It said Mansour is her maiden name.

Earlier Claim

Earlier, a group calling itself the Arab Revolutionary Cells claimed responsibility for planting the bomb. Palestinian sources familiar with terrorist operations said Thursday that was a new name used by Abu Nidal, the terrorist leader widely blamed for the Dec. 27 airport massacres at Rome and Vienna.

Various police reports say the woman is about 30 years old, with a slight limp.

Steve Heckscher, TWA spokesman in Athens, said: “She is the prime suspect. That’s the leading supposition.”

He said the woman underwent a body search at the Cairo airport by an Egyptian policewoman “as part of routine security measures” and her luggage was searched by Egyptian and TWA security.

Mansour checked in late at Cairo and was driven to the Boeing 727 by a TWA official in a company car, according to Egyptian security officials. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the passenger list was checked after the bombing and that no suspicions were raised about any passenger.

Rigorous Checks

Sally McElwreath, a TWA spokeswoman in New York, said a review found no breaches of security procedures at the Cairo, Rome and Athens airports.

She said Mansour was “subjected to the most rigorous of checks” and was driven to the plane because the shuttle bus assigned to the flight already had left for the aircraft.

“Egyptian authorities also made a detailed passport check and gave final approval for her to leave the terminal,” McElwreath said.

Body searches of passengers are not uncommon in Cairo, particularly of Lebanese and Palestinians.

Heckscher said a team of U.S. forensic experts arrived in Athens on Friday to perform autopsies on the four victims: Ospina, a Colombian-born U.S. citizen from Stratford, Conn., and a Greek-American woman, Dimitra Stylian, 52, her daughter Maria Klug, 25, and Maria’s 9-month-old daughter Dimitra, all of Annapolis, Md.

The four Americans were blown out of the plane to their deaths through a 10-foot hole made by the explosion. The bodies were recovered near Argos, 60 miles southwest of Athens.

Petersen and the other six crew members returned to New York on Friday, Heckscher said.