An El Al Boeing 747-238B at Warsaw Okecie Airport,
Mariusz Siecinski – GNU 1.2
Returning home from our day trip to Edinburgh, myself and Mrs AWS have pause for thought as we eat our Burger Kings in Standard Premium. Beyond our train window, the peaceful Scottish Lowlands flash past. However, by an astonishing and tragic coincidence, the sites of Britain’s worst train and air disasters both lie in Dumfrieshire and sit only 15 miles apart. Previously, we said a prayer for those killed in the 1915 rail accident at Quintinshill Loops near Gretna.
Last week we reflected upon a more recent air tragedy while passing through Lockerbie station. Investigating the debris of Pan Am Flight 103, which crashed into the town on December 21st 1988, suggested the resulting loss of 270 lives to be far from accidental. The discovery of Semtex residue upon the wreckage brought to mind El Al Flight 016 and moved suspicion of responsibility for the outrage towards Syria.
El Al Flight 016
Three years prior to the bombing of Pan Am 103, on Thursday, April 17th 1986, a Miss Anne-Marie Murphy passed without a hitch through security at Heathrow Airport. Her luggage was then X-rayed at the Israeli airline El Al’s Gate 23 where she was questioned by security officers Yossi Orbach and Ofer Argov. Anne-Marie was ticketed to connect with El Al Flight 016 which originated in New York and stopped at Heathrow before departing on a final leg to Tel Aviv. One of 138 Heathrow passengers, upon leaving London the Boeing 747 was expected to be carrying 365 people.
Fair-haired, pregnant and in her early 30s, Miss Murphy was employed as a maid at the Hilton Hotel in London and claimed to be going to Bethlehem to stay at the Hilton there. However, the security officers knew of no such hotel in Bethlehem. Further questioning showed that the Irish national was travelling with only £50. Suspicious, the guards X-rayed her roller case and handbag again, revealing nothing beyond innocuous-seeming contents. After being emptied, her wheeled case remained heavy. Further investigation revealed a false panel in its bottom, behind which Orbach found a brown tape-wrapped package.
Expecting drugs, unwrapping revealed 3 1/4 lbs (1.5kg) of a greasy orange substance which turned out to be semtex, a Czech-made plastic explosive, difficult to detect and invisible to an X-ray machine. An innocuous-looking pocket calculator in her luggage proved to be a timer, detonator and small amount of further explosives. Packed close to the false bottom, this turned the case into a powerful time bomb.
Suspicion fell upon Miss Murphy’s boyfriend, Jordanian national Nezar Hindawi, who had organised the trip to the Middle East for the Dun Laoghaire woman so she could meet his family. Hindawi claimed he would join her later and they would marry. Thirty-two-year-old Miss Murphy, one of ten siblings and a complete innocent in the plot, was expecting Hindawi’s child. She had left school at 14 and worked as a machinist in Dublin for ten years before seeking employment as a chambermaid in London.
Nezar Hindawi
Hindawi, also 32 years old, had accompanied Anne-Marie to the airport, returned to Central London and then boarded a Syrian Arab Airlines bus to return to Heathrow for a 2 pm flight to Damascus. Before the bus set off, however, he heard news of a bomb being discovered at Heathrow. Realising the plan was compromised, he left the bus and went to the Syrian Embassy.
At trial in October of that year, Judge Sir William Mars-Jones and his court were told that although a Jordanian national, Hindawi travelled on a Syrian service passport normally issued to government officials. Hindawi met and began a relationship with Miss Murphy in 1984. He told her he had arrived in London in 1980 to work for various Arab newspapers.
The most recent British Visa found inside his passport was in a false name and had been issued in Damascus in February 1985. Between April and October of that year, he had been out of the UK with his passport showing travel to Jordan, Italy, Poland, East Germany, Romania and Bulgaria. He re-appeared at Miss Murphy’s flat on April 7th 1986, two days after flying into London and booking into The Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, where crew members of the Syrian state airline stay over.
Out of the blue, Hindawi offered to marry Anne-Marie and take her on holiday to Israel. In haste, a passport was arranged for her. On April 15th – two days before she attempted to board Flight 016 – the couple went to an El Al tour operator subsidiary on Regent Street. Hindawi remained outside after instructing his fiance to book one ticket for herself as he claimed to already have a ticket for another flight.
Together they packed her roller case, and on April 17th he arrived in a taxi at her flat before 730 am to take her to Heathrow. They arrived at about 830 am. Forensic evidence showed the bomb’s timer had been armed by connecting a battery to the calculator shortly after 8 am. Pushed to the bottom of the bag, the main charge would set off minutes after 1 pm when the aircraft and 365 passengers would be flying at 39,000ft over Austria. Before Miss Murphy reached the checkout, Hindawi had left her and began to make his way back to Central London.
In court, it was claimed that Hindawi was acting in concert with agents of the Syrian Government on behalf of a group calling themselves The Jordanian Revolutionary Movement.
On returning to his accommodations, he told the hotel manager he was catching a flight to Paris later that day and boarded a Syrian Airlines connecting bus service. Upon hearing the plot was exposed, he went to the Syrian Embassy. From here he was taken to a house in West Kensington, where his appearance was altered by cutting and dying his hair. The following morning, two men tried to take him back to the Syrian Embassy but he took fright and fled. He ran to the London Visitors Hotel, where a receptionist recognised him from that morning’s newspapers and contacted the police.
Hinadwi told the authorities he thought Murphy’s bag contained drugs. Having been approached in Syria to receive a package in London, he had been promised a payment of a quarter of a million US dollars. He later claimed to have been framed by Israeli intelligence. Following a 14-day-long trial, the jury found Hindawi guilty with Sir William sentencing the Jordanian to 45 years in jail. Diplomatic relations with Syria were cut. Syrian Ambassador Loutof Allah Haydar was expelled from the UK.
The Garrick Briefing
As the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing of December 1988 progressed, both the physical and circumstantial evidence pointed towards Syria. So much so that the following March a meeting took place in a private room at London’s Garrick Club. At an off-the-record secret dinner, Mrs Thatcher’s Transport Secretary Paul Channon assured five journalists present that arrests were imminent.
However, Syria, a country long held as harbouring terrorists and oft blamed for terrorist attacks against American property, had not been acting alone. To understand the resulting connection, we must examine yet another tragic loss of life in the air.
To be continued…
© Always Worth Saying 2024
