Mother of 2 Linked to Terrorist Bombs Is in Seclusion

ZARQA, Jordan —  The women of the Hasi family went into seclusion here Wednesday, deepening a mystery about two Palestinian brothers being held separately in Britain and West Germany in connection with terrorist bombs.

“The family feels that by giving out any information about the boys now, they will only be helping the cases against them,” said a friend of the family. The friend said the mother of the two men is being comforted by her two daughters.

One of the suspects, Nezar Hindawi, 31, was arraigned in a London magistrate’s court Tuesday on charges that he attempted to blow up an Israeli jumbo jet and its 388 passengers and crew at Heathrow Airport last week.

The other is Ahmed Nawaf Mansour Hasi, 35, who was arrested last Friday in West Berlin in connection with the April 5 bomb explosion at that city’s La Belle discotheque, which killed an American serviceman and a Turkish woman and wounded more than 200 others.

A spokesman for West Germany’s Justice Ministry said the two men had met in Western Europe several times, including once earlier this year, but he said there was no evidence that the meetings were designed to coordinate their alleged roles in the two terrorist acts.

Different Surnames

According to a member of the family, who asked that his name not be published, the two men are full brothers even though they use different surnames. The Hasi family is a branch of the larger Hindawi clan and Nezar, following the tradition of many Arab males, adopted the clan’s name.

The family member said the family originally came from a village on the West Bank of the Jordan River--an indication that they are Palestinian--although they grew up in Jordan and carry Jordanian passports, as many Palestinians here do.

Friends of Hindawi in Amman said he frequently expressed identification with the Palestinian cause, the quest for a return to the homeland and the formation of an independent Palestinian state.

However, none of the Hasi family friends interviewed could recall either brother being particularly active politically.

“Like most Palestinians, we all talked about the problem,” said a journalist friend.

Stunned at His Arrest

Hindawi’s friends said they were stunned at his arrest and maintained that he could never bomb an airplane even if he might support such an action by others.

“I can’t believe he would be capable of what they accuse him of,” said one friend.

Hindawi is accused of planting a bomb in a bag that he then duped his Irish girlfriend into carrying with her as cabin baggage on the El Al flight to Israel. The bomb was discovered by an El Al security man after the woman, Anne-Marie Murphy, had passed through several airport security checks and just as she was about to board the Boeing 747 for Tel Aviv.

The woman, who is now in protective custody, has reportedly told police that she was flying to Israel to marry Hindawi after discovering that she was pregnant with his child.

“It was a classic example of enrolling an unwitting courier by feigning romance,” said a Western diplomat familiar with the case.

Hindawi was arrested in a London hotel last Friday after a 36-hour hunt by police.

According to his friends and relatives, he married a Polish woman and has a 4-year-old daughter named Natasha. The woman and daughter now live in Poland, but it is unclear if the couple is still married.

“Nezar spent quite a lot of time in Poland,” said one friend at Al Rai, a Jordanian newspaper where Hindawi worked briefly as a journalist.

Written From Syria

The Polish woman was quoted extensively in the British press as saying that Hindawi had traveled widely in the Arab world and had written to her from many countries, including Syria. The Reagan Administration and Israeli government have said that Syria trains and supports terrorists.

Hindawi was raised in Zarqa, a town about 15 miles from Amman, by his mother, who had separated from her husband when he moved to London in 1960. After high school, Hindawi went to university in Beirut, according to a cousin.

He has worked as a journalist on several Arabic papers published in London, first on a weekly called Kul Jadid, which folded after four issues, and Al Arab, which is run by Ahmed Honi, a former Libyan minister of information. The newspaper said Wednesday that Hindawi had been dismissed.

Family friends said Hindawi has three brothers: Ahmed Hasi, the man detained in West Germany; Mahmoud, a medical assistant in the embassy of Qatar in London, and Mohammed, who is living in the United States.

Sought German Asylum

Ahmed arrived in West Germany as a student in 1975, they said. Shortly after he arrived, he asked for political asylum but was refused, according to German authorities. He married a German woman, but the marriage quickly ended. A 7-year-old daughter from the marriage now lives with her uncle, Mahmoud Hindawi, in London.

Hasi was arrested at his West Berlin apartment on information provided by London police, according the German prosecutors. Police found documents indicating “the trail leads to Libya,” said Volker Kaehne, a Justice Ministry spokesman.

Both the United States and West Germany announced after the disco bombing that they had evidence that Libya had contacted its embassy in East Berlin about the bombing before and after the explosions. The evidence was cited as the immediate justification for the U.S. air raid on Libya’s two largest cities last week.