WHO WAS HINDAWI WORKING FOR?

not tested in court during the trial of the convicted Syrian bomber

THE most striking aspect of the strange case of Regina v. Nizar Hindawi is the discrepancy between the evidence pre- sented at the Old Bailey trial and that subsequently touted by government offi- cials, anonymous security sources and zealous media outlets. The entire affair raises serious doubts about the nature of evidence and what conclusions can be drawn from it, both in court and in the press. Sir Geoffrey Howe, offering the Commons his reasons for cutting diploma- tic relations with Syria only hours after Hindawi's conviction, was the first to take the public beyond the evidence presented to the jury. He said, `Hindawi's visa applications were on two occasions backed by official notes from the Syrian Foreign Ministry.' The prosecution, which would have had every reason to do so in order to strengthen the Crown's case that Hindawi was a Syrian agent, submitted no such Syrian official notes.

It is not disputed that the Syrian Foreign Ministry issued Hindawi with a service passport in the name of Issam Shara on 9 February 1986, but the British visas are problematic. The prosecution submitted in evidence a visa application for Issam Shara made to the British Embassy in Damascus on 10' February without mentioning any supporting document from the Syrian Foreign Ministry. The form states the applicant's year of birth, 1950, and marital status, married. (Hindawi was actually born in 1954.) It gives his employer as 'the office of the provisions department' and his profession as jonctionnaire'. The purpose of the visit: 'buying materials'. The visa appears to have been granted without delay and without the consul in Daniascus checking credentials further.

Less than two months later, on 3 April, the same Issam Shara, using the same Syrian passport, made an application for a second British visa. On this occasion, he listed his employer as 'the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' and his profession as `accountant'. He wrote down a home address in Damascus different from that on the previous application, and he said the purpose of the visit was tourism. The visa was granted the next day, 3 April, and Hindawi flew to London two days later. If the application had been scrutinised, it is unlikely Hindawi would have been in London to give Anne Murphy the bomb to take to the El Al check-in.

The Foreign Office has not said how the visas could be granted so quickly — the first time to a man whose passport was only a day old and who had in fact already been to Britain tinder the name Nizar Hindawi. Nor has it said how, two months later, a consular official could accept a second application without asking the reason for the sudden change of profession and em- ployer. The Crown has not said why it withheld from the jury the Syrian official notes Sir Geoffrey, but not Mr Dennis Amy of the Foreign Office, whose deposi- tion was read in court, said accompanied the visa applications.

The case smells to high heaven, and it is too soon for the- prosecution, the Anti- Terrorist Branch and the Government to be patting themselves on the back for revealing 'the conclusive evidence of Sy- rian official involvement' with Nizar Hin- dawi, although we have not, of course, been furnished with the intelligence tapes which Sir Geoffrey Howe played to his fellow EEC foreign ministers in Brussels. The Syrian connection is only the most likely of many possibilities, any one of which can be ruled out only at great peril.

The prosecution based its case primarily on the same source the defence did: the testimony of Nizar Hindawi. On any reck- oning, Hindawi is a liar. In court, he contradicted himself and instructed his counsel to change the nature of his defence as the trial progressed. It was almost as if he were seeking to prove the old American legal adage, 'The first step to a successful appeal is a conviction.' He instructed Mr Gilbert Grey QC at one point to challenge anti-terrorist branch Detective Sergeant Will Price's testimony that Hindawi had told him he met the Syrian ambassador, Dr Lutofallah Haidar, the morning after El Al security staff discovered the bomb. Later, during his own testimony, Hindawi admit- ted meeting the ambassador. Indeed, the ambassador admitted meeting Hindawi. Yet, all three versions of the meeting differ: Hindawi's confession to 'the police, Hindawi's account in the witness box and Ambassador Haidar's in press interviews.

Again and again, this triangle of oppos- ing versions manifests itself: Hindawi said one thing to police, another in court and Syria has yet a third account. Regarding the Syrian passport, Hindawi told police his control officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Haitham Said of Syrian Air Force Intelli- gence, arranged the passport for him. In court, Hindawi said Khalid Dandach, the man who was going to pay him $250,000 to smuggle drugs into Israel, obtained the passport. Ambassador Haidar said Syria's Ministry of Information, in accordance with common practice for Arab journalists who write articles sympathetic to Syria and who may have fallen out with their own governments as a result, authorised the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to give him a `He's got a gnu.' passport. Who is telling the truth?

The trial began, perhaps appropriately, on the 13th anniversary of the 1973 Arab- Israeli war, 6 October.

In the first few days, Roy Amlot slowly and painstakingly built the Crown's case around Anne Marie Murphy (`Was ever a woman worse used by a man?'). The New York Times wins the award for understate- ment with its report of 8 October, which called her 'the least inquisitive of women'. The 32-year-old Irish former factory work- er and chambermaid seemed, on her own testimony, never to have asked Hindawi (who had impregnated her twice) why he disappeared for months at a time, where he went, what he did, why he wanted to marry her after not seeing her for five months, why he wanted her to carry his suitcase on an El Al flight to Israel or how he, an Arab, planned to meet and marry her there. Her testimony linked Hindawi to the bag, which was found to contain three pounds of plastic explosive manufactured in Czechoslovakia, and the detonator, a timer concealed in a small calculator which Hindawi inserted in the bag on the morn- ing of 17 April when he took her to the airport.

Linking Hindawi to Syria was the re- sponsibility of the police, who relied on the existence of the Syrian passport and Hind- awi's own confession. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, itself the result of historical police abuses of suspects in custody, a Custody Officer is required to keep a daily record of anyone in jail, noting his health, any complaints or visi- tors, what he eats and so forth. Hindawi was arrested on 18 April at the London Visitors' Hotel by Detective Sergeant Will Price. At Paddington Green police station, Hindawi was fingerprinted and his clothes removed. When Sergeants Price and McMurray interviewed Hindawi that even- ing, he told them he believed he had been smuggling drugs. The custody record showed that officers awakened Hindawi five times during the night. The next day, he was interviewed again twice. Through- out the day of the 19th, he expanded on the drugs story, saying he had gone to Damas- cus to meet the men who would pay him to smuggle narcotics into Israel.

On 20 April, in the crucial fourth inter- view which Hindawi later repudiated, he allegedly decided to change his story. He prefaced his account, according to police testimony, by telling them he knew of bombs hidden in London and Brighton, potential terrorist targets in the UK and Europe and Syrian links to the IRA. The police told the court they did not interro- gate him further on any of those claims, despite their intrinsic interest to officers whose job it is to combat terrorism. Hind- awi also told them a fantastic story, that the foreign hostages in Lebanon were held by the Muslim Brotherhood, a fanatic Sunni group opposed to the Syrian regime, and would, if necessary, be taken to Jordan. (Anyone familiar with the hostage tragedy in Lebanon knows this to be nonsense.) The officers, despite the fact that some of the hostages are British, did not question him about this either.

Hindawi went on to mention that when he met Syrian Air Force Intelligence offi- cials in Damascus, they had shown him a Sam-7 missile which they said would be taken to Jordan to be fired at a regular Israeli combat flight over the Jordan Val- ley. Although they ignored Hindawi's alleged knowledge about bombs in Britain and British hostages in Lebanon, the police produced a map of the Jordan Valley and interrogated him further. Under cross- examination in. court, Price said none of the information Hindawi gave him was relayed to foreign intelligence services. Later, another policeman when asked in court could not explain how, if the records never left Paddington Green police station, a full account had appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 9 May.

According to the record of the fourth interview, Hindawi said he had gone to Damascus with the idea of forming a movement of Jordanian students opposed to King Hussein. When he arrived at Damascus airport, he was taken im- mediately (and inexplicably) to the Syrian Air Force Ministry. He met the head of Air Force Intelligence, Brigadier-General Mohammed al-Kholi, and his deputy, Lieutenant-Colonel Haitham Said. Hind- awi told police Said had shown him the trolley bag, secret compartment, bomb and calculator-detonator in Damascus and had asked him to arrange for it to be put on an El Al flight. Hindawi said using Anne Marie Murphy was his own idea.

Throughout the interrogations, Hindawi was refused access to the solicitor, Michael Fisher, who was demanding to see him, a denial permitted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Those Americans who applaud the outcome of the trial should know that the central piece of evidence against Hindawi, and the only link between him and Syrian Air Force Intelligence, would have been inadmissible in an Amer- ican court, because he had not been allowed to see a lawyer.

In his testimony to the court, Hindawi returned to the drugs story, claiming to have been an innocent victim, possibly duped by Israeli agents in Damascus. He did not say police had coerced him to admit knowledge of the bomb during his fourth interview. He maintained police had fabri- cated all his answers and made him sign without reading their notes. He said Sergeant Price had come to his cell the night before (although this is not in the custody report), threatened to turn him over to Mossad and told him his father and brother, who live in London, were in nearby cells. (His brother, Mahmoud, had in fact been detained and was later re- leased.) Hindawi, who spent nearly three days in the witness box, stuck to the drugs story.

In .the drugs version, Hindawi said the Syrian ambassador greeted him warmly that morning of 17 April and agreed to help him escape. In the disputed fourth interview, Hindawi said the ambassador congratulated him for trying to blow up the plane, said Haitham Said would be proud of him and arranged for him to leave the embassy by a secret door and to hide at the house of an embassy security guard. According to the • ambassador, Hindawi arrived unannounced at the embassy at about noon on 17 April. He said Hindawi claimed to the embassy doorman he was the first cousin of the foreign minister, whose surname is also Shara. He went to the ambassador's office. Haidar said he determined by his accent that he was not from Deraa, the Shara family village. Hindawi's answers to questions about the Shara family convinced the ambassador Hindawi was an impostor. He asked him to leave, but a security man, thinking he could ingratiate himself with the foreign minister, offered him a place to stay. This does not explain why Hindawi said the man, Munir Mona, gave him a haircut.

Hindawi had told police during the fourth interview that he had previously done work for Jordanian intelligence, and he gave the name and telephone number of a control officer in Amman, Saqr Abdel- Aziz. At my request, a colleague of mine in Amman called the number Hindawi gave and found a Saqr Abdel-Aziz. When my colleague explained why he was calling, the voice at the other end denied any know- ledge of Jordanian Intelligence and Saqr Abdel-Aziz. As with everyone else in this case, he would say that, wouldn't he?

This leads us to the most interesting and least explored possibility: that Hindawi was working for someone other than Syrian Air Force Intelligence. Could he have been working for someone who wants to discredit that organisation, which is closest to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, the former Air Force commander: Jorda- nian intelligence, Iraqi intelligence, Yasser Arafat, possibly even a rival intelligence branch within Syria? The defence counsel raised the possibility that Mossad, Israel's external intelligence service, may have been behind a plot to discredit Syria, never intending the bomb to go off. The jury clearly rejected this line of defence, but it was not confronted with these questions: What motive did Syria have to blow up an El Al plane?

Why would Syrian Air Force Intelli- gence allow a low-level operative like Nizar Hindawi to meet its commander and to work closely with one of its top officers, rather than use a cut-out?

Why did the police believe what he told them about Syrian Air Force Intelligence involvement, but not about anything else — bombs in London and Brighton, hos- tages in Lebanon, drugs?

What is the source for the stories appear- ing in British newspapers and on television that Hindawi was working for Abu Nidal, a charge not even hinted at during the trial?

Those who are interested in discovering the truth of this case, even if they are satisfied, as the jury was, that Hindawi intended to blow up the plane, should allow for the possibility that he may have been working for someone else, but he may not have known who his employers were or that the bomb was meant to be discovered. The trial is over, the Syrian Embassy in London closed, but the inves- tigation into what really happened should continue. Lives may depend on it.