Third Man Arrested in Attempt to Plant Bomb on El Al Plane

Scotland Yard today said police have arrested a third man in connection with an attempt to plant a bomb on an El Al jetliner at London’s Heathrow airport.

Anti-terrorist squad detectives also raided a house in West London that reportedly had been rented by several Arab men and seized documents, police said. They said the third suspect was detained Sunday, one day after a second man was picked up, questioned and released.

The prime suspect in the thwarted bombing is Palestinian Nezar Hindawi, 35. Police said he duped his pregnant Irish girlfriend into trying to board the jet Thursday with explosives on the promise that he would marry her in Israel.

London’s Daily Mirror newspaper today quoted a Polish woman as saying she is Hindawi’s wife and the mother of his 5-year-old daughter. “How can I believe he was telling this woman he would marry her? It is a great shock,” Barbara Hindawi was quoted as saying from her parents’ farm in eastern Poland.