Syria Behind El Al Bombing Attempt, London Court Told

A prosecutor said Monday that there is “convincing evidence” that Syria was behind an Arab’s attempt last spring to smuggle a bomb onto an Israeli jumbo jet in his pregnant girlfriend’s suitcase and kill the 375 people aboard.

Roy Amlot, the prosecutor, said the man charged with the crime met Syria’s military intelligence chief and agreed to attack Israeli targets.

In his opening statement at the trial of Jordanian-born Nezar Hindawi, 32, Amlot said that Hindawi had told police he was given $12,000 in Syria and came to Britain specifically to plant the bomb.

“There is convincing evidence he was acting in concert with agents of the Syrian government and acting on behalf of a group calling themselves the Jordanian Revolutionary Movement,” Amlot said. He gave no details about the group.

A security agent of the Israeli airline El Al at London’s Heathrow Airport found the bomb April 17 in hand luggage carried by Hindawi’s Dublin-born girlfriend, Anne-Marie Murphy, 32, who thought she was flying to Israel to marry him.

The bomb was timed to go off when the flight was over Austria at 39,000 feet, and “it is almost certain that all on board would have been killed,” Amlot told the jury at the Old Bailey criminal court.

When Hindawi realized that the bomb had been discovered, Amlot said, he went to the Syrian Embassy in London and delivered a letter to the ambassador. The prosecutor said the ambassador called Damascus for instructions and that Hindawi was taken to a house, where his hair was cut and dyed.

“The following morning, two men tried to take him to the embassy, but he took fright and ran off to the London Visitors Hotel,” Amlot said. Hindawi was arrested there hours later.

Hindawi claimed he was given a bag containing the bomb in a London hotel, told how to prime it and what the target was and advised to choose a young woman to carry it, Amlot said.

After Amlot’s opening statement, Murphy, who gave birth to a baby girl in July, took the stand to relate how Hindawi took her to Heathrow Airport and promised to take a later flight to Israel.

“He just kissed me goodby on both cheeks and left me,” she said.

The night before, she said, he had personally packed her suitcase.

Once she was at the airport, she said, an El Al security guard stopped her and discovered the bomb inside her suitcase.