Hindawi affair

The Hindawi affair was a failed attempt to bomb El Al Flight 016,[1] from London to Tel Aviv in April 1986 by Nezar Nawwaf al-Mansur al-Hindawi (Arabic: نزار نواف منصور الهنداوي, born 1954), a Jordanian citizen.

On the morning of 17 April 1986, at Heathrow Airport in London, Israeli security guards working for El Al Airlines found 1.5 kilograms (3.3 lb) of Semtex explosive in the bag of Anne-Marie Murphy, a five-month pregnant Irishwoman attempting to board a flight to Tel Aviv with 375 other passengers.

Unknown to Murphy, he intended her to take an explosive-laden bag on board an El Al flight from Heathrow Airport to Tel Aviv on 17 April 1986.

Hindawi said that the explosive was delivered to him in the Royal Garden Hotel in London on 5 April, less than two weeks prior to the attempted bombing.

He claimed that the police forced him to sign the statements attributed to him unread, threatened to hand him over to the Mossad and told him that his parents were also arrested in London.

[6] Historian Benny Morris and journalist Ian Black (Middle East editor of The Guardian) similarly dismissed this interpretation of events.

[5] After the court found Hindawi guilty, the then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher broke off diplomatic relations with Syria.

[11] In his interview with Time magazine on 20 October 1986, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad said that the Israeli intelligence agency planned the Hindawi operation.

[12] According to Seale, sources in Syrian intelligence told him that they "had fallen in to Israeli trap" and were penetrated and manipulated by Mossad to smear Syria with terrorism and isolate it internationally.

Jordanian Mohammed Radi Abdullah, a paid Israeli agent, offered his cousin Hindawi $50,000 to place explosives by way of his girlfriend on the flight.

The Syrian government's claim that the Mossad replaced originally innocent luggage with the bomb is refuted by the discovery of hair belonging to Hindawi trapped under the tape used to attach the explosive to the bag.

[2] In December 2011, Anne Murphy instigated legal action to sue Slate magazine for alleged defamation in an online article.