‘I Hate You,’ Maid Tells Lover at El Al Bomb Trial

The Irish chambermaid who unwittingly carried a bomb for her Arab boyfriend in an attempted attack on an Israeli airliner broke down in court today, pounding her fist and shouting at him, “You bastard, you. . . . I hate you, you’re wicked!”

Jordanian-born Nezar Hindawi, 32, accused of trying to blow up an El Al flight between New York and Tel Aviv, showed no reaction to the outburst by Anne-Marie Murphy, 32, who had his child in July.

Murphy, a soft-spoken woman described by prosecutors as “a simple Irish girl,” described today how she was pulled over by an El Al security agent and a bomb was discovered in the roller-suitcase she said Hindawi had given her.

Murphy, who was more than five months’ pregnant at the time, said Hindawi promised to marry her in Israel but said he was taking another flight.

‘How Could You Do This?’

Then Murphy, a hotel chambermaid from Dublin, for the first time at the trial looked directly at Hindawi.

“You bastard, you!” she shouted. “How could you do this to me? I hate you, I hate you, you’re wicked!”

She banged her fist several times on the witness stand and stared at Hindawi.

Ending about 3 1/2 hours of testimony, she told defense attorney Gilbert Gray in cross-examination that she knew nothing about the Arab-Israeli conflict. She was then excused from the stand.

The prosecution says Hindawi, who pleaded innocent, told police he was supplied with more than three pounds of high-powered Czechoslovak-made plastic explosives and a detonator hidden in a pocket calculator by Syrian intelligence. (Story on Page 9.)

Suitcase Was Heavier

Murphy testified that the one time she lifted the suitcase on wheels it was heavier than she had originally thought although “I didn’t think anything of it” at the time.

Afterward, she said, she was screened by a suspicious El Al security man who found the explosives hidden in the suitcase’s lining.

“He told me to sit down though I didn’t know what was happening and two policemen and two dogs and two guns (appeared),” she said. “And they took me into a little room and showed me a black thing (the explosives) on the table. I’d never seen it before.”

Hindawi was arrested less than 24 hours later on a tip from the owner of a hotel where he was staying.

The plane would have been carrying 375 people on a flight that originated in New York and ended in Tel Aviv after its London stopover.