A convicted terrorist who has served 26 years in prison for trying to blow up an Israeli airliner lost his latest High Court bid for parole today.
Lawyers for Nezar Hindawi, 57, argued that he no longer poses a security threat anywhere in the world and could safely be released on licence.
Mr Justice Blake, sitting in London, expressed concerns about the case, but he ruled that a Parole Board decision that the Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin must remain behind bars was both "rational and lawful on the information before it".
Hindawi, who faces deportation to Jordan when he is eventually freed, is serving a 45-year jail sentence for attempting to plant a bomb on an El Al passenger plane in 1986.
He hid the bomb in his pregnant fiancee's hand luggage without her knowledge on a flight from London Heathrow to Tel Aviv.
It could have killed 375 people but was found by security staff.
The judge said: "This was a crime of great notoriety committed for political purposes."
The Parole Board panel rejected Hindawi's latest bid for early release in December last year.
A previous panel recommended in 2009 that he no longer posed a threat to the public and it was safe to grant him...
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