8 Years Later, Jordanian Charged with Attempted El Al Bombing

A Jordanian citizen was charged in a Lod military court Wednesday with attempting to bomb an E1 A1 airliner in mid-flight eight years ago.

The incident, which included the successful smuggling of a bomb on board an E1 A1 flight, was revealed for the first time at the arraignment of Fuad Hassin a-Shara, 36, allegedly a member of the terrorist May 15 faction of A1 Fatah, the main branch of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Shara was removed last year from a car ferry, which was stopped and boarded by the Israeli navy on the high seas while enroute from Cyprus to Lebanon.

According to the charge sheet, Shara befriended a young Greek woman, whom he sent to Israel on a shopping trip with money and a return air ticket.

He allegedly instructed her to become acquainted with security measures at Ben-Gurion Airport, purchase souvenirs in various parts of the country and meet him in London.

Unknown to the woman, Shara allegedly gave her a booby-trapped suitcase fixed to explode during the return flight to London. It failed to explode and was discovered after the plane landed at London.

The case is reminiscent of one in April 1986 in which Nezar Hindawi, a Jordanian, tried to dupe his pregnant Irish girlfriend into bringing a bomb made of Semtex plastic explosives, hidden in her luggage, aboard an E1 A1 jumbo jet from London to Tel Aviv. The attempt was successfully stopped when E1 A1 security personnel became suspicious of a pregnant woman traveling alone to Israel for a visit.

Hindawi was convicted in the fall of that year in London’s Old Bailey criminal courthouse and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

The charge sheet against Shara did not specify how the bomb was discovered or what happened to the courier.

Shara was also charged with planting bombs at the Israeli Embassy in Singapore six years ago and at the E1 A1 office in Naples 11 years ago.