Bomb-carrying woman freed

Press, 21 April 1986, Page 6

Bomb-carrying woman freed

NZPA-Reuter London

A pregnant Irish woman arrested over an attempt to blow up a crowded Israeli airliner, was freed at the week-end after two days of questioning, with no charges brought against her. Anne-Marie Murphy, aged 32, was arrested at Heathrow Airport, London, carrying explosives on Friday as she was about to board an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. She carried a bag containing about skg of explosives stashed in a false bottom. The police said she may have been duped into taking the bomb on to the plane. The bomb would probably have destroyed the plane soon after take-off and killed its 370 mostly American passengers, the police said. Detectives are still questioning her boyfriend, Nezar Hindawi, a 35-year-old Jordanian who

was arrested on Saturday. Miss Murphy left Dublin last year to work in London, where she met Hindawi.

Agence France-Presse reported that the British police had said earlier the attempted bombing had nothing to do with Britain supporting American air raids on Libya last week.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said the attempt had been prepared well before the bombings, which were partly conducted by Britain-based United States Air Force bombers and strongly supported by the Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher.

Security at the airport had been tightened since the attempt, said the British Airports Authority. The number of body searches of passengers and their baggage as they pass through electronic scanning equipment and passport control had increased.