Hindawi affair

The Hindawi affair was the attempted bombing of an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv in April 1986 and its international repercussions.

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 explosives in the bag of Anne-Marie Murphy, a five-month pregnant Irishwoman attempting to fly on a flight with 375 fellow passengers to Tel Aviv. In addition, a functioning calculator in the bag was found to be a timed triggering device. She claimed to be unaware of the contents, and that she had been given the bag by her fiancé, Nezar Hindawi, a Jordanian. Murphy maintained that Hindawi had sent her on the flight for the purpose of meeting his parents before marriage. A manhunt ensued, resulting in Hindawi's arrest the following day after he surrendered to police. Hindawi was found guilty by a British court in the Old Bailey and received 45 years imprisonment, believed to be the longest determinate, or fixed, criminal sentence in British history (see also life sentence).

Hindawi subsequently appealed against the sentence of 45 years. His appeal was rejected by the Lord Chief Justice who noted that "Put briefly, this was about as foul and as horrible a crime as could possibly be imagined. It is no thanks to this applicant that his plot did not succeed in destroying 360 or 370 lives in the effort to promote one side of a political dispute by terrorism. In the judgment of this Court the sentence of 45 years' imprisonment was not a day too long. This application is refused."

When Murphy met Hindawi in 1984, she was working as a chambermaid at the Hilton Hotel, Park Lane in London. When she became pregnant with his child, Hindawi convinced her that they should go to Israel to get married. He also insisted that she should go on ahead since, as an Arab, it would take longer for him to obtain a visa. Unbeknownst to Murphy, he intended her to take an explosives-laden bag on board an El Al flight from Heathrow Airport to Tel Aviv on 17 April 1986. He escorted her to the airport and instructed her not to mention his name, since Israeli security would interrogate her about their relationship.

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