London, April 02:A terrorist who tried to blow up an aircraft with 375 people onboard by keeping a bomb in his pregnant fiancee’s hand luggage has won an appeal to leave jail after 25 years.
Jordanian national Nezar Hindawi was sent to jail in 1986 after being found guilty of duping his Irish fiancee into carrying a bomb on to an Israeli airliner flying from London to Tel Aviv.
Security staff at London’s Heathrow airport found the bomb before it could be taken on board or detonated.
A manhunt was launched for Hindawi, who surrendered the next day, the Independent reported Saturday.
Two high court judges overturned rulings by former British justice secretaries that Hindawi must serve two-thirds of his 45-year jail term.
In 2009, the parole board recommended Hindawi’s release but the justice secretary ordered that the prisoner remain in jail.
The judges have now ruled that the information on which the justice secretary based his decision was unbalanced and unfair. As such, they said, the decision must be quashed.
However, despite having won the right to be released on parole, Hindawi would remain in prison for now, the daily said.
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