ARBID: JILTED LOVER MADE BOMB HOAX WHEN JOURNALIST EX TOLD OF ARRANGED MARRIAGE
A jilted lover made a hoax bomb threat to get back at her ex-BBC journalist boyfriend after he told her he was having an arranged marriage, a court heard.
Ahla Arbid, 33, told airport authorities that Hossain Ansari Pour’s new bride was carrying explosives when she flew to the UK, it is claimed.
The mother-of-two reacted furiously when she discovered the truth about Mr Ansari Pour, a former BBC journalist who now works for Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones newswire, prosecutors claim.
Southwark Crown Court heard the couple had met on an Islamic dating website and agreed to enter into a ‘temporary marriage.’
Giving evidence to the court, Mr Ansari Pour said his father was a senior lawyer and lecturer in law in Tehran, while he himself had worked for several well-known news organisations including the BBC, and was now head of Farsi at Dow Jones, which publishes the Wall Street Journal.
He said he had already been married twice, once in a ‘full’ Islamic marriage, from which he has an 11-year-old daughter, and also in a previous “temporary” marriage, which under Iranian law allows legal sexual relationships on a less formal basis than full marriage.
He said that when he started seeing Arbid, he told her that his parents were looking for a wife for him in a traditional arranged marriage.
He said: ‘Even on the first day that I met Ahla, I did tell her my parents were looking for a wife for me.
‘[I told her]: “This is the plan of my parents. I’m here because I’m in London at the moment and I don’t know when I will get married.
‘“I would like to be in a relationship which we call a temporary marriage in my religion. If you are not happy, I will walk out of the door now.”
‘She said: “No, I need a man in my life.”’
The court heard that the couple entered into a sexual relationship, and that Arbid later told the journalist she was pregnant by him, subsequently having an abortion.
Mr Ansari Pour’s parents found him a bride in Iran, and although he was still engaged in his ‘temporary marriage’ to Arbid, he flew to his homeland for a religious wedding ceremony.
He then arranged for his new wife, Sara Aryan Pour, to come to Britain, booking her a flight to London via Turkey on 2 May this year.
Arbid discovered what was happening, and contacted both the British Airports Authority and the authorities in Turkey to tell them that Miss Aryan Pour was carrying an ‘explosive substance’ to give to her husband in London.
Prosecutor Adam King said officers in Turkey questioned Miss Aryan Pour, but released her after realising that the threat was a hoax.
When she was eventually questioned by the police, Arbid said she had genuinely thought that what she was saying might be true because of telephone conversations she had overheard.
Asked by Mr King whether he in fact had any terrorist sympathies, Mr Ansari Pour said: ‘This would be absolutely ridiculous, to think that.’
Arbid, of (Flat 36) Bilton Towers, Great Cumberland Place, Marylebone, west London, denies communicating false information with intent.
The trial continues.
ENDS
