A report from Paris received by the main office of El Al Airlines here today indicated an attempt was made to sabotage an El Al jumbo jet en route from New York to Lod Airport via Paris. The report was denied later by Paris police. According to the report, a woman passenger, identified only as a recent emigrant from the Soviet Union returning to Israel from the US, said she was approached at Orly airport by a couple who asked her to take a transistor radio with her to Israel. She said she took the radio and gave it to an El Al security officer who, the passenger said, found it contained a bomb.
According to the first version the woman gave, the couple approached several passengers of the El Al flight but were apparently unsuccessful in getting any of them to take the radio. When the woman passenger was questioned at Lod, she changed her story, saying she had refused to accept the radio, though she had been offered a $100 bribe to do so. (In Paris, French police and Israeli sources denied the entire story. The police said no radio was found and the two men who allegedly offered the passenger the radio could not be found. Paris investigators said they believed the woman invented the entire incident.) The El Al plane left Paris after a 20-minute delay.
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