Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

HINXTON• 241

in Belgrave Square and had been escorted to a safe house in Stonor

Road, the home of diplomat Mounir Mouna.

The subsequent investigation identified Nezar’s eldest brother Hasi

as a terrorist convicted in November 1986 in West Berlin of having

bombed the German-Arab Friendship Society in March 1986; he had

been sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment. Both were linked to a sen-

ior Syrian Air Force intelligence officer, Colonel Haitham Said, a

well-known sponsor of international terrorism who had used Syrian

diplomatic privileges to smuggle weapons and explosives into Eu-

rope.

Nezar Hindawi was sentenced to 45 years’ imprisonment. Britain

also expelled the ambassador, who had been directly implicated in

the plot, and severed diplomatic relations with Damascus.

HINSLEY, SIR HARRY.Born in November 1918, Harry Hinsley won
a scholarship to read history at St. John’s College, Cambridge, but in
his second year he was sent toBletchley Parkto act as liaison be-
tweenGovernment Code and Cipher School’s Naval Section and
the Admiralty’sOperational Intelligence Centre. The Naval Sec-
tion achieved considerable success in 1941 in reading the enemy’s
wireless traffic encrypted on theEnigmamachine and played a cru-
cial role in protecting the transatlantic convoys from U-boats.
After the war Hinsley returned to Cambridge as a research fellow
and was appointed a history lecturer in 1949. In 1969 he was made a
professor. Three years later, Hinsley was commissioned to supervise
the preparation of an official history of British Intelligence in World
War II. The first of the five volume series was published in 1979; the
last, on strategicdeceptionby Sir Michael Howard, was delayed
until 1990. In 1981 Hinsley was made vice chancellor of the univer-
sity, a post he held for two years. He was knighted in 1985 and died
in 2002, aged 79.

HINXTON.In 1940MI5acquired a secluded property, the Old Par-
sonage in the quiet Cambridgeshire village of Hinxton, as secure
long-term accommodation for captured enemy agents who were un-
suitable for incarceration atCamp 020. The only person known to
have escaped from what MI5 called the ‘‘Home for Incurables’’ is
summer, who was quickly recaptured in 1941 after he had assaulted
one of his guards and stolen his motorcycle.