October 7: The Achille Lauro Hijacking

Four members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, hijacked an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, in Egyptian waters on this date in 1985, with 400 passengers aboard. The hijackers demanded the release of 50 Palestinians from Israeli prisons. Refused permission to dock in Syria, they executed a wheelchair-bound American, Leon Klinghoffer, 69, whom they had correctly identified as Jewish, and threw his body overboard. Klinghoffer was on a 36th wedding anniversary cruise with his wife, Marilyn, who was terminally ill. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak convinced the hijackers to surrender and allowed them to fly to PLO headquarters in Tunisia, but U.S. warplanes intercepted the flight and forced it to land at a U.S.-Italian base in Sicily. Italy claimed jurisdiction in the case, however, and allowed the lead hijacker, Mohammed Abbas (no relation to the Palestinian Authority leader), to go to Yugoslavia. Abbas was then tried in absentia and sentenced to life in prison (of 15 Palestinians involved in the hijacking conspiracy, only five were arrested). In 1990, Abbas tried to attack Israelis on a beach near Tel Aviv from a speedboat. He moved to Gaza in 1996 under the terms of a peace agreement that granted a range of PLO members immunity for terrorist acts conducted before Oslo. Abbas died in 2004 in U.S. custody in Iraq at the age of 56. The Klinghoffer family was awarded damages by the PLO in 1990, and used the funds to establish a fund at the Anti-Defamation League to combat terrorism through education, politics, and law.
“Abbas now says the Achille Lauro was a ‘mistake.’ He says his men had only intended to use the Italian luxury liner to slip into Israel, not commandeer it. But, he adds, their cover was blown when a crew member saw them cleaning their weapons. When asked why Klinghoffer was killed, he replies: ‘He created troubles. He was handicapped but he was inciting and provoking the other passengers. So the decision was made to kill him.’ ”—Charles M. Sennott, Boston Globe, 1998