"I determined where he would get out, I determined that these people would be killed rather than others," said Yossi Voltinsky, the man who drove the suicide bomber in yesterday's attack in Eilat and let him off a few minutes before he exploded. Voltinsky was "99 percent sure" his passenger was a suicide bomber. He considered crashing his car or running over the man but did not "because of the 1 percent chance that maybe he was innocent, maybe a crazy, how would I be able to live with that?" Voltinsky said.

Voltinsky, an internal auditor for the Isrotel hotel chain and a lieutenant colonel (Res.), met the terrorist a few minutes after leaving his home in northern Eilat. "I saw a man dressed in red, I didn't think about him, I often give rides to guys to the hotel area. As soon as I looked at him in the rearview mirror, I saw that something was wrong - he wore a windbreaker zipped to the neck, with a big backpack strapped on. He kept one hand in his pocket, his eyes darted around, he was very nervous. He acted very unnaturally. I asked him where he was headed, he didn't answer, just motioned for me to keep going. I asked, 'Where are you from?' He didn't answer. I realized at that point I was transporting a hostile person, a terrorist or a robber."

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Voltinsky decided to take a detour to keep the terrorist from reaching a crowded area. "I couldn't drive to the police station because it's inside the city, and I didn't want to go to a checkpoint because I knew that as soon as he saw soldiers, he'd blow up," Voltinsky said.

A few minutes later, after Voltinsky again asked the man where he wanted to go, he answered, "Haifa."

"He had a strong Arab accent, I knew he wasn't Bedouin, I began speeding up to make him suspicious of me. I drove to a remote area and released my seat belt so I could move if I needed to. He sensed everything I did and sat up straight. I thought about using my phone, I was 99 percent sure he was a terrorist." That was when Voltinsky considered flipping his car over, but then the man motioned for him to stop.

Voltinsky let the man out at the outskirts of the city, about a kilometer from the site of the bombing, and called the police with a description of the man. He tried following him, but lost his trail. A few minutes later the police called Voltinsky to tell him about the explosion and ask him to come and identify the terrorist.

"It was only then that I realized that others were killed. I saw the bodies minutes after the explosion. It is a horrible feeling."