El Al Suspect Says of Former Lover: ‘I Still Love Her’
An Arab accused of sending his pregnant Irish girlfriend onto an Israeli jetliner with a live bomb testified in his own defense today, maintained his innocence and said of the hotel chambermaid who last week denounced him on the stand, “I still love her.”
Prosecutors say Jordanian-born Nezar Hindawi, 32, told police that he was trained and given explosives by Syrian intelligence agents in an aborted attempt to blow up an El Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv on April 17.
Anne-Marie Murphy, 32, whom Hindawi had told he would join on a later flight, interrupted her testimony last Wednesday to scream hatred at the father of the child she bore three months after the plot was foiled.
Breaking down on the stand, Murphy stared at Hindawi and clenched her fist, screaming: “You bastard you! How could you do this to me? I hate you, I hate you, you’re wicked!”
“I still love her and I will love her forever,” the defendant testified today as he cast smiles around the chamber at the Old Bailey.
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