Britain Links Syria to Plot, Cuts Ties; U.S. Recalls Envoy : Damascus Held Culpable as El Al Bomb Trial Ends

Britain broke diplomatic relations with Syria on Friday, asserting it had “conclusive evidence of Syrian involvement” in a “monstrous and inhumane” plot to blow up an Israeli jumbo jet filled with passengers on their way to Israel for the Passover holiday.

The announcement was made by Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe shortly after a 32-year-old Jordanian was convicted of attempting on April 17 to plant a bomb on an El Al Israel Airlines jetliner at Heathrow Airport. The Jordanian, Nezar Hindawi, was sentenced to 45 years in prison, the longest term handed down by an English court in modern times.

During the course of the three-week trial, the prosecutor detailed direct and substantive links between Hindawi and the Syrian government, including its director of intelligence; its ambassador to London, Loutof Allah Haydar, and flight crews of Syrian Arab Airlines, the government-owned airline.

‘Wicked Involvement’

Howe, in announcing the move to the House of Commons, said Britain had decided to “sacrifice” its presence in Syria “in order to make plain our repudiation of the wicked involvement of the Syrian government in terrorism of this kind.”

The foreign secretary said there was convincing evidence that Hindawi acted on orders of Syrian intelligence, traveled on a Syrian passport issued in a false name, rushed to see the Syrian ambassador immediately after the bomb plot was uncovered and took refuge in accommodations arranged for him by the Syrian Embassy.

A Foreign Office spokesman said that other evidence, independent of the trial, also had linked Syria to the plot.

Howe gave Syria 14 days to close its embassy in London and said the British Embassy in Damascus, the Syrian capital, also would be closed. Hours later, the Syrian government retaliated by saying that it had broken relations with London and had ordered the British ambassador to leave Damascus within a week.

Howe also said tighter security controls were being placed on the movements of Syrian Arab Airline flight crews and equipment, including stricter searches of personnel, passengers and baggage.

Britain will also tighten visa requirements established last June for Syrians wishing to enter the country, Howe said. He urged Britain’s allies to take “appropriate supporting action,” without elaborating.

Both the United States and Canada immediately responded with support for Britain. The United States withdrew its ambassador from Damascus, while Canada called its ambassador home for consultations. Withdrawing an ambassador, while leaving lower-ranking officials in charge, is considered a moderate response in diplomatic circles--less punitive than suspending relations but more pointed than simply recalling the envoy temporarily for consultations.

Haydar, the Syrian ambassador to London, reiterated denials that his country was involved in the bombing attempt and claimed it was a joint U.S.-Israel scheme to discredit Syria.

“All Britain had to do was dance to the tune,” said the ambassador, who was summoned to the Foreign Office shortly after Hindawi was convicted and then ordered to shut down his 21-man embassy and leave the country.

“After all, Syria would never benefit from such activities and, if Syria were to permit such activities, it need not and will not resort to such an impostor who had actually been recruited by adversaries to Syria,” he said.

Duped Girlfriend

A jury in London’s Old Bailey criminal court ruled that Hindawi had attempted to smuggle plastic explosives aboard the El Al 747 in the hand luggage of his pregnant Irish-born girlfriend. He is said to have told the woman, Ann Murphy, 32, that he was taking her home to meet his family in preparation for their marriage but that he had to travel separately.

Apparently unaware that she was carrying the bomb, Murphy passed through all routine security checks and was about to board the aircraft when an alert member of El Al’s security team detected the explosives during a final pre-boarding search.

William Mars-Jones, the High Court presiding judge in the case, praised the El Al security guard. “He is responsible for saving the lives of some 380 innocent civilians,” Mars-Jones said in court Friday before sentencing Hindawi.

“This was a well-planned, well-organized crime which involved many others besides yourself, some of them people in high places,” the judge told Hindawi. “A more callous and cruel deception and a more horrendous massacre it is difficult to image.”

The jury of seven men and five women deliberated seven hours before returning the guilty verdict shortly before noon. As required by English law, the verdict was unanimous.

Hindawi sat expressionless in the court as he heard the verdict followed by the sentence. As he was led out of the courtroom, he smiled briefly and raised his hand with fingers raised in a “V” sign.

The immediacy and the extent of the British government’s reaction were consistent with tough anti-terrorism action taken by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government in the past. The government’s swift action is also expected to add further impetus to a new, more aggressive attitude toward terrorism taking shape elsewhere in Western Europe.

Foreign Office officials said details of the evidence against Syria in the plot had already been transmitted to other Western governments, including the United States, to encourage broader international action to isolate Syria.

“We are impressing upon them the wider security implications of the involvement of the Syrian authorities and are urging them to take appropriate supporting action,” Howe told the House of Commons.

Syria is the second Arab country Britain has broken diplomatic relations with in the past 2 1/2 years. It cut its ties with Libya in 1984 after a gunman fired from the Libyan Embassy in London, killing a policewoman who was at the embassy because of a demonstration by opponents of Libyan leader Col. Moammar Kadafi.

Hindawi’s trial provided one of the most explicit, detailed accounts ever made public in the West of the planning of a major terrorist attack.

Hindawi had pleaded not guilty, claiming he had been duped into thinking the carry-on luggage contained illegal drugs, not a bomb.

The Jordanian’s defense attorney, Gilbert Gray, had told the jury Hindawi was set up by the Israeli intelligence organization, Mossad, to discredit Syria.

Hindawi was arrested last April 18 at a London hotel, 36 hours after escorting Murphy to the departure area of Heathrow Airport where the El Al flight was boarding.

The bomb he put in her hand luggage was timed to explode about three hours into the flight. Aviation experts determined the device probably would have brought down the plane over the Austrian Alps, almost certainly killing all persons on board.

The incident followed by two days the American bombing raid on Libya, which the United States undertook after Western intelligence linked Col. Moammar Kadafi’s regime to the April 5 terrorist bombing of a West Berlin discotheque frequented by American servicemen.

Hindawi’s brother, Ahmad Nawat Mansour Hasi, has been charged by West Berlin police in connection with that attack. A cousin, Awni Hindawi, was reportedly arrested by Italian authorities last August and formally charged with being a member of an armed group.

Neither of those cases has come to trial.

Prosecutors claimed that shortly after Hindawi’s arrest, while he was being interrogated by police, he initially said he thought Murphy’s luggage contained drugs, not a bomb, and maintained that he himself had been duped.

However, after a brief period, he changed his story, police said, and claimed he had been recruited by a high-ranking Syrian intelligence officer in Damascus to blow up the Israeli plane.

In court, Hindawi reverted to the defense that he had been duped and thought he was carrying drugs.

According to his statement, Hindawi said he was given the bag, already packed with explosives, by a Syrian security officer posing as a Syrian Arab Airlines crew member and told to find a woman to carry it aboard the flight.

Speaking in imperfect, accented English, Hindawi described in court his decision to immigrate to Britain from his native Jordan in 1979, his meeting Murphy and his first trip to Syria in a decade in January, 1985, as a journalist to cover an Afro-Arab unity conference.

He testified that during his trip he met a well-dressed, articulate man called Khalid Dandesh at a Damascus hotel, and said Dandesh suggested smuggling drugs.

Following a return trip to Damascus a few weeks later, Hindawi said he was given a Syrian passport used by government personnel on official business. It carried an assumed name.

“I understood he was a very important man who could secure me more than an ordinary passport,” Hindawi said. “They don’t give a passport like this to ordinary people.”

Hindawi said he was also given $15,000 and told to go to the Syrian Embassy in London if problems arose.

Murphy, who gave birth to a daughter three months ago, told the court she met Hindawi in late 1984 through a friend while she was working as a chambermaid at a London hotel.

Murphy said that after Hindawi’s visit to Syria, he returned to Britain and then went to West Germany. She said that when she telephoned Hindawi in West Berlin late last year to tell him she was pregnant, he urged her to get an abortion.

She said she had no contact with Hindawi until last April 7, when he appeared in London, stating he wanted to take her to Israel to meet his family and marry her.

He gave her the bag to pack and then, in a taxi en route to the airport, she said he placed a calculator into it. Prosecutors said the calculator functioned as a timing device and a detonator for the bomb.

After kissing Murphy goodby at the airport, Hindawi returned to the Royal Garden Hotel to rendezvous with a Syrian Arab Airlines crew scheduled for a flight leaving London for Damascus at 1 p.m. London time, four minutes before the bomb was timed to go off.

Prosecutors claimed that when news broke of the bomb’s discovery, Hindawi got off the Syrian Arab Airlines crew bus and went immediately by taxi to the Syrian Embassy.

In court, Hindawi admitted going to the embassy and meeting the ambassador but claimed he was acting on instructions of what he believed was a drug smuggling operation.

Hindawi, speaking of the man he identified as Haydar, said, “He was not very pleased either with what had happened to me or the incident itself.”

Prosecutors charged that the ambassador arranged for Hindawi to hide at the West London residence of a Syrian security agent and that two Syrian diplomats cut and dyed Hindawi’s hair before leaving him for the night.

However, when Syrian agents returned for Hindawi the following morning, police believe Hindawi panicked and fled to a small hotel owned by a friend, who urged him to give himself up. He surrendered to police on the condition he not be turned over to Israeli intelligence.

Dramatic Confrontation

Despite the sweeping political implications of the trial, the most dramatic confrontation in the trial was the first face-to-face meeting between Murphy and the man who, the jury decided, tried to kill her.

The woman, described by the judge Friday as “a simple Irish lass,” began her testimony hesitantly, carefully avoiding looking at her former lover.

But later she broke down, turned to Hindawi, and shouted: “You bastard you! How could you do this to me?’

She then muttered, “Oh, Christ, oh, God, I could kill him” before screaming again, “I hate you! I hate you!”

Hindawi sat impassively through the outburst but later claimed he still loved Murphy and hoped to marry her someday.