Case Study: The Achille
Lauro Hijacking
by Sean K. Anderson
and Peter N. Spagnolo
Background:
Tension
between the State of Israel and the Palestinians was nothing new in October 1985.
Four major wars had been fought, the Israelis had invaded and occupied southern
Lebanon
in 1981 and countless attacks, counterattacks, preemptive strikes and raids had
been carried out by both sides over the larger questions of Israeli existence
and Palestinian rights. One of the
results of the 1981 invasion was the displacement of the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) from Lebanon
and the relocation of its headquarters to Tunis in 1982.
On
25 September 1985, three Israeli citizens were killed on their yacht as it was
anchored off the coast of Larnaca, Cyprus. Credit for this attack was claimed by Force
17, an elite unit of the PLO whose main function was the personal protection of
the PLO leadership but that also conducted terrorist strikes as well as attacks
on rival Palestinian factions.
On
1 October 1985, Israel
launched a long range air strike against the PLO headquarters in Tunis killing over 73
people and wounding about 100 others. Israel announced this attack on Tunis in a press conference
held by Israeli Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of Staff Moshe Levy,
and Air Force Chief Amos Lapidol. In the
press conference, the three Israeli leaders announced a new policy wherein
terrorist targets would be attacked wherever they were located and that no
terrorist was safe.
Mounting
wave of terror against Israelis and Jews, in Israel,
in the areas and abroad, culminating with the murder of three Israelis in
Larnaca's harbour, led the government of Israel to seek new ways to combat terror.
Since it was evident that the attacks were masterminded by the PLO and the
various organizations under its umbrella, Israel
decided to attack the PLO headquarters in Tunis. In a daring, long distance aerial
raid, Israeli planes bombed a PLO base in Tunis,
some 4800 kilometers round-trip from Israel. 60 terrorists were killed,
including some senior members of "Force 17." Arafat was not in Tunis at the time, but
his headquarters was hit. [1]
Some claim that the three Israelis
killed in Cyprus
were Mossad agents while the official Israeli position is that they were
civilians. While many considered the
aerial attack on Tunis
as specifically a retribution for the Larnaca incident the Israeli government
insisted it was simply a part of their wider ongoing war on terrorism.
Events Leading Up to the Hijacking
When the Achille Lauro attack
occurred at first many believed that it had been conducted in retaliation for Israel’s attack on Tunis. However the hijacking operation had been
planned in advance for over 10 months, involving two previous rides on the Achille
Lauro by Masar Kadia,
posing as a Greek shipping magnate under the name “Petros Floros” and
accompanied on at least one of these trips by the man who would lead the
hijacking, Magied al Molqi. These scouting trips were meant, among other
things, to assess security measures, meal times, normal activities of
passengers and crew, relative competence and aggressiveness of specific crew members,
likely response of ship’s captain and crew, and the layout of the ship. On 28
September 1985 accomplices smuggled four Soviet-made Kalashnikov automatic
rifles, eight hand grenades, and nine detonators abroad the Tunis-to-Genoa ferry, the Habib, which
were then carried abroad the Achille Lauro by the four hijackers in
their uninspected baggage on 3 October 1985.[2] Masar Kadia, the previous scout who was also
the handler of the four hijackers, booked a cabin separate from the others, and
did not associate with them apart from one private meeting with their tactical
commander, Magied al Molqi, after which he debarked in Alexandria.
Later it was learned that only Kadia and the leader of the operatives,
Magied al Molqi, knew of the full hijacking plan. Prior to arriving in Alexandria, after consulting with Kadia, al
Molqi gave orders to the other three to unpack their weapons and prepare to
seize the vessel. This fact was learned
from the youngest hijacker, Bassam al-Ashkar, only 17 years old, who later
denied the report that they had been discovered by a cabin steward and had
seized the ship on the spur of the moment. Although the other three had been
kept in the dark until that moment the original plan had apparently been to
hijack the ship on the high seas.[3] Technically such an operation would violate
PLO declaratory policy since 1974 which ruled out terrorist attacks “outside
the territory of Occupied Palestine.”[4]
While adhering to the 1974 policy
had made the PLO and its factions more respectable as “freedom fighters” in the
view of the international community (apart from the United States and Israel
who still regarded them as terrorists) it also reduced the strategic
effectiveness of their military struggle:
The group that would seize the Achille Lauro had conducted seven major actions in the period
1978-1983, all of which involved attempts to take hostages and all but one
involved attempts to infiltrate Israel.
Only three of the six infiltration attempts succeeded while in only one
case did the terrorists succeed in seizing hostages, but in no case did they
win the release of any Arab prisoners.
In April 1979 four Palestinian fighters landed on a beach near Nahariyah, Israel,
on a mission to seize hostages. Three
Israeli civilians were killed by the terrorists, two of whom were killed and
the other two captured. The political
and military payoffs of such actions were minimal: Israel was able to defend its
territory and citizens effectively while the rest of the world, whose citizens
were no longer in the cross-fire of the Arab-Israeli conflict, could regard it
now with relative indifference.[5]
The
Achille Lauro, a vessel owned by the
Italian government, was a 23,629 ton cruise ship that was 643 feet long,
capable of serving 900 passengers, having two swimming pools, a movie theater,
and a discotheque. The Italians had
leased the ship to the Chandris-Italy Company which offered low-cost cruises
throughout the Mediterranean. Some 748 passengers had boarded the ship at Genoa on 3 October for a twelve day Mediterranean cruise
with calls at Naples, Syracuse,
Alexandria, Port Said,
Ashdod (Israel),
Limassol (Cyprus), and
Rhodes (Greece). Cruise manager Max Fico later reported that a
party of several young men kept to themselves and displayed none of the
friendly behavior usual on cruises. Some
passengers tried to strike up conversations with the men during a meal but they
seemed reluctant to interact with their fellow passengers and merely said they
were from Argentina. When a female passenger, who was fluent in
Spanish, tried to speak with them none seemed to understand anything she said
to them. The terrorists boarded with
passports issued from Norway,
Argentina, and Portugal.[6]
According to a document seized
later, the four had planned to attack the port of Ashdod
upon arrival but when a crew member saw them cleaning their weapons, they were
forced to change their plans:
The Ashdod Port Operation: When the Zionist enemy carried out an air
strike against the Palestinian HQ in Hamam al-Shatt in Tunis in October 1985,
the Front reacted to this aggression by attempting a sea landing in Ashdod
port... this operation was unsuccessful, forcing the Front's fighters to change
the original plan... once they were uncovered on the ship taking them. They
took over the ship known as "Achille Lauro"... the organization found
itself fighting on several fronts, [including] directly against the American
enemy. This, especially after American aircraft hijacked a civilian Egyptian aircraft
that carried the comrade Abu al-Abbas, General Secretary of the Front and
Member of the PLO Executive Committee, and other comrades, and forced them to
land in the Sicily airport in Italy...[7]
Although
there had been numerous aircraft hijackings during the early 1980’s, the taking
of a civilian passenger ship was unprecedented. Consequently the security
measures on the ship were lax: only a passport was required to buy a ticket,
there were no checks of luggage, and very little observation of persons
embarking other than to ensure they were paid passengers. Therefore the Achille Lauro’s distress call would receive immediate international
attention. Fortunately, before the
actual hijacking occurred most of the passengers had debarked at Alexandria for a tour of the Pyramids planning to travel
overland to Port Said
(the next port of call) to continue their voyage. This was on day five of a planned twelve day
Mediterranean cruise and the next stop after Port Said
was to be Ashdod, Israel, the terrorists’ supposed
target. The people remaining on board
were the 350 members of the crew (Italian and Portuguese citizens) and some 97
passengers of various nationalities.[8]
Another reason this hijacking would captivate
the world-wide attention that the terrorists were seeking was the nature of
their immediate victims: mainly tourists
from about 20 nations, including, Belgium,
Brazil, Britain, France,
Holland, Italy,
Spain, Switzerland, the United
States, and West Germany. No Israelis were on the passenger list
however. A group of elderly Jewish
Americans would be singled out for ‘special treatment’ by the hijackers and
thus receive the anxious attention from the on-looking global audience, namely,
Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer, along with eight of their closest friends,
including three retired couples and two older women who shared with the
Klinghoffers summer homes in the same group of condominiums in Long Branch, New
Jersey. The Klinghoffers were
celebrating their thirty-eighth marriage anniversary but their voyage also had
some urgency behind it: Marilyn, age 58,
had been diagnosed as having an incurable colon cancer and had less than a year
to live. Leon Klinghoffer, age 69, a
retired small appliance manufacturer, had suffered two strokes and was partly
paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. He had limited ability to use his
hands, which were tremulous, while his speech was often slurred. Fellow
hostages recalled afterwards that the hijackers seemed irritated and uneasy
with his slurred speech and erratic motions.
Neither spouse expected to long
survive the demise of the other but both had decided to make the most of this
twilight honeymoon voyage in the company of their closest friends.
However the hijackers would also
radio threats to kill all of the over 400 people abroad if their demands were
not met or if escape were attempted, so anxiety was shared among the several
nations, families, and friends who had other passengers and crew members abroad
the cruise ship.
Events
During the Hijacking
The
passengers first realized something was amiss when the hijackers burst into the
dining room toward the end of the noon meal of 7 October, firing over their
heads and shouting barely intelligible commands. Some passengers fled into the kitchen
followed by one of the hijackers who beat two of the kitchen staff to the floor
and forced all back to the dining room.
Two crew members were reportedly shot but received only minor wounds
while another Italian sailor was slightly wounded by shrapnel from a bullet.[9] As
the hijackers consolidated their control over the vessel, they took control
over the ship’s bridge and radio room.
After
securing the passengers in the dining room, the hijackers ordered the crew to
summon Captain Gerardo de Rosa: “As soon as I got there, I faced the
machineguns. First they fired some shots
at the deck, shouting in Arabic. Then they told me to head for Tartus.”[10]
The ship then turned for the Syrian port which was about 300 miles to the
northeast. The hijackers then allowed
the crew to return to running the ship telling the captain that any attempts by
him or the crew to thwart them would result in harm to the passengers held
hostage.
After
the initial shooting spree, the terrorists herded all passengers, except for
Anna Hoerantner, a 53-year old Austrian, into the dining room and instructed
Captain de Rosa to order the crew to carry on with their normal duties but
avoid all contact with the hostages.
Hoerantner had been knocked down a stairwell when the hijackers had
rushed into the dining room. In the
confusion she escaped and hid in a bathroom in an unoccupied cabin for the
duration of the hijacking and was found there still hiding 15 hours after the
hijacking had ended. The terrorists told
the crew that there were 20 hijackers on board; this was probably a ruse to
discourage any attempt to re-take the ship.
In the dining room the terrorists pulled the pins from hand grenades and
holding the arming lever in place with their hands, they forced passenger
Sophia Kubacki and others to hold the grenades.
Holding the devices in this configuration required constant pressure on
the arming levers, if any hostage had dropped one of the grenades, it would
have exploded within a few seconds. The treatment of the hostages was erratic,
going from considerate one minute to brutal the next: when one passenger asked
for a cup of water, the hijackers handed one to her but when an exhausted
Marilyn Klinghoffer attempted to lay down on the floor, one of them struck her
with the butt of his weapon ordering her to get up. The terrorists also tried some form of
political statement by occasionally proclaiming “Reagan no good! Arafat good!”[11]
and then later forced the passengers into a common area, the Arazzi
Lounge. Then using ship’s radio they issued a demand that 50 Palestinians being
held in Israeli prisons be immediately released.
After
issuing their demand, the hijackers directed the ship into the Mediterranean and turned off the ship’s
transponders. The ship blended into the
busy sea lanes and in spite of extensive tracking efforts by the United States, Egypt,
Italy, Great Britain and Israel, it disappeared for much of
the next 36 hours.
To
further exacerbate the situation, it was unclear exactly who the hijackers were
and with what (if any) group they were affiliated. Early on, the terrorists claimed to be part
of the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) and this seemed to be confirmed by
the fact that the only prisoner named in the release demand was a member of the
PLF. However the PLF was no longer a
single entity but had splintered into no less than three factions.
The
original PLF had been founded in 1961 by Ahmed Jabril who coordinated the
group’s efforts with Fatah in 1965. In
1967, a group from the PLF, which included Jabril, founded the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) under Dr. George Habash. Soon after the
foundation of the PFLP, Jabril became disillusioned with the group’s emphasis
on ideology and broke away to form yet another splinter group, namely, the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) while
still sharing the parent group’s goal of the eradication Israel in favor
of a Palestinian state. In 1977, yet another split took place when the current
PLF broke away from PFLP-GC over Jabril’s support of Syria’s
policy in Lebanon. In
late 1983 the PLF split when founder Abu Abbas decided the group was growing
too subservient to Syria. He and his followers left for Tunis to align
themselves closer with Arafat's al Fatah.
The PLF faction left in Damascus
was headed by Talat Yaqub but itself split when Abdal Fatah Ghanim tried
unsuccessfully to seize power over the PLF in January 1984. The Yaqub faction remained in Damascus while Ghanim and his followers established their
rival PLF office in Libya. While the PLF had been recognized by Yassir Arafat in
April 1977 as a member of the PLO, this recognition continued to be extended
only to the faction led by Abu Abbas,
who was eventually made a member of the PLO Executive Committee.[12]
With all of the factions and shifting loyalties and alliances, the authorities
did not know initially with which PLF faction they were dealing.
On
the following day the hijackers sought to separate Jewish and American
passengers from the others. On the hijackers’ asking if there were any Jews
present two elderly Austrians identified themselves whom the hijackers
immediately beat and manhandled. Having
seen this the ten, or so, Jewish Americans held their tongues. The hijackers separated the two Jewish
Austrians, the 12 Americans and five British women belonging to a dance troupe
and forced them to climb up to an upper open deck where they were forced to sit
or lie under the burning sunlight and where they were surrounded by tins of
gasoline or diesel fuel. The hijackers
told these hostages that they would be shot, blown apart by grenades, and
burned alive if anyone attempted to rescue them. When there was difficulty in moving Leon
Klinghoffer’s wheelchair up the stairs to the upper deck the hijackers separated
him from the rest, over the protests of Marilyn Klinghoffer, who was forced to
leave him at the point of a gun. The
hijackers took Mr. Klinghoffer’s watch and cigarettes from him at that time. This was the last time Marilyn Klinghoffer
would see her husband alive. The
hijackers took the passports of these 19 selected passengers and shuffled them,
telling them that they would be killed one-by-one in the order of the shuffled
deck of passports.
Meanwhile
the hijackers ordered Captain de Rosa to sail towards Syria and radioed their
demands in the name of the PLF for the release of 50 Palestinian prisoners in
Israel, naming only Samir al-Qantari, a PLF member arrested for the murders of
an Israeli man and his 5-year old daughter in their 1979 raid on the Israeli
town of Nahariya on the Mediterranean coast.
Once they had come into radio contact with the Syrian port authorities
in Tartus they repeated demands to talk to International Red Cross officials,
and to the Ambassadors of Italy, West Germany and Britain to pressure the
Israelis to comply. While they claimed
to have seven Israeli captives abroad this claim was denied by Israel.
The
Voice of Lebanon, a Christian radio station in Beirut, intercepted radio communications
between the hijackers and the Syrian authorities that were the first indication
that a hostage had been killed. At 2:42
P.M. [local times] the voice of a hijacker demanded: “[Where are the]
negotiators? We will start killing at
1500 hours.” At 3:23 P.M. the hijacker’s voice then said: “What are the
developments, Tartus? We will kill the second. We are losing patience.” However
this report was followed by another radio message from the captain in English
stating that everyone aboard was “in very good health. Please, please, please don’t try anything!” [13]
However
according to the later testimony of Captain de Rosa, around 3:05 P.M. he heard
gunshots and when the hijackers appeared in the bridge with blood spattered
over their pants and shoes they told him that they had killed Leon Klinghoffer.
The ship’s bartender later testified that he witnessed the oldest hijacker
shoot Klinghoffer in the forehead and in his chest. The ship’s barber and one
of the waiters were forced to pick up Mr. Klinghoffer in his wheelchair and to
throw them both over the side of the ship.
According to the report of one of the women held hostage in the Arazzi
room the youngest hijacker had started to weep.
When she asked what was wrong he replied that the other hijackers had
killed the man in the wheelchair.
Refused
landing rights in Syria the
hijackers ordered the captain to return to Port Said. Meanwhile Yassir Arafat, who
declared that he “totally dissociated himself” from this operation, sent PLO
Executive Council members Abu Abbas and Hani al-Hassan, to Cairo to mediate the crisis. With the ship
anchored 16 miles off Port Said
at 7:15 A.M. [local times] on 9 October
1985 Egyptian authorities contacted the ship and began negotiations. A boat
with some Egyptian officials, along with Abu Abbas and another unidentified man
abroad, reached the Achille Lauro. The Egyptian and Italian authorities had
agreed to grant the hijackers’ demands of safe passage out of Egypt with no
prosecution in exchange for their freeing all the hostages and their
surrendering the ship but only on the condition that no one had been
harmed. Captain de Rosa was interviewed
by Egyptian officials between 1:30 P.M. and 4:30 P.M. during which time he
stated, “I am the captain. I am speaking
from my office. And my officers and everyone is in good health.” Based on this
false assurance the Egyptians agreed to the hijackers’ demands who in turn
agreed to surrender at 4:20 P.M. They
finally left the ship at 5:00 P.M. after they packed their guns and remaining
arms to take with them off the ship. The hijackers then disappeared from public
view. In spite of the shipping company’s and captain’s wish to sail the Achille Lauro to its next intended
destination of Ashdod, Egyptian officials insisted on it remaining in Port Said
for their own investigation. The Achille
Lauro was then steered into Port
Said, arriving there at 4:00 A.M. the morning of 10
October 1985.
After
the Hijacking: Flight and Pursuit
When
the hijackers had just left the ship Marilyn Klinghoffer ran to the infirmary
where, the hijackers had told her, they had left Leon Klinghoffer. Not finding him there she was told by the
infirmary staff to go see the captain.
When she reached the bridge the captain informed her that her husband
had been murdered by the hijackers. In
fact the cruise came to an end at Port Said,
with the 15 Americans returning to the United
States by a military plane on October 12 with a brief
stopover in Sicily
to allow witnesses to identify the hijacking suspects who by then were in
custody there. The other passengers were
booked return passage by either the cruise line or their respective
governments.
The
repeated denials by the hijackers, by Abu Abbas, and by Yassir Arafat, that
anyone had been killed and that Leon Klinghoffer had merely died of a heart attack
before they threw his body overboard, were exposed on 15 October by the
discovery of Klinghoffer’s body on the Syrian coast. Subsequent forensic tests confirmed not only
his identity but also his violent death by gunshots to his forehead and chest.
Syria’s actions in recovering and delivering the body (which eventually was
returned to his widow on 20 October 1985 and buried later in New Jersey) may
have been intended to undermine the international credibility of Yassir Arafat
with whom Syria had serious differences over his peace policies towards Israel.[14]
Throughout
the hijacking the United States had urged all governments to deny landing
rights to the hijackers, as well as any safe passage or asylum to them and, if
possible, either to extradite them to the United States or at least to arrest
them pending other legal actions. After the hijackers had left the Achille Lauro and U.S. officials demanded that local officials
arrest them, President Mubarak claimed that they had already left Egypt
for an undisclosed destination. In fact U.S. intelligence knew they were being moved
around by Egyptian authorities until they could be flown out on an EgyptAir 737
bound for Tunis.
President Reagan was briefed about 5:00 P.M. (all following times are GMT) on
10 October and he ordered the U.S. Defense Department and CIA to attempt an
interception of the airplane. At 7:15
P.M., four F-14 fighter planes left the U.S.S.
Saratoga stationed off the coast of Albania. Earlier two E-2C
electronic surveillance planes (smaller versions of the AWACS aircraft) had
already left the Saratoga in order to track the EgyptAir
flight. When the EgyptAir flight, carrying the four hijackers along with Abu
Abbas and his bodyguard, took off from Cairo at
9:15 P.M., U.S. intelligence
quickly informed President Reagan who was abroad Air Force One en route from Chicago to Washington
DC at that time. At 9:37 P.M. Reagan gave final approval to
intercept the plane. At 10:30 P.M. the F-14s intercepted the EgyptAir, which
had been refused permission to land at either Tunis
or Athens, and ordered it to land in Sicily. At 11:45 P.M.
the plane had landed at the NATO Air Base at Sigonella, just outside Catania.[15]
Respecting
diplomatic protocol, President Reagan telephoned Italy’s Prime Minister Bettino
Craxi just minutes before the plane was due to land at Sigonella to inform him
of the operation. Craxi immediately ordered the Italian police and military at
Sigonella to intervene on behalf of the Palestinians. The Italian Prime
Minister had worked during his 26 month-long government to secure good
relations with the PLO and the Arab states but would claim later that he had
intervened because the unauthorized landing of the EgyptAir flight at Sigonella
violated the U.S.-Italian accord on the use of the NATO base.
Once
the EgyptAir 737 landed at Sigonella and had come to a stop several dozen U.S.
Army Delta Force soldiers exited a nearby C-141 transport plane and surrounded
the civilian plane. While their orders had been to take the four hijackers,
along with Abu Abbas and his bodyguard off the civilian plane, rush them into
the C-141 and to take off immediately for the United States, Italian carabinieri
arrived and surrounded the American soldiers. A tense situation took hold on
the ground with the Italian police being joined by Italian soldiers already on
the base, facing off U.S.
troops for three hours. As U.S. troops parked trucks in front of, and behind,
the Egyptian plane to prevent it from moving the Italians countered by doing
the same to the C-141 to prevent it from being able to move. While the Italian and American troops each
held their own ground for the next three hours Reagan Administration officials
tried in vain to persuade the Craxi government to relent and allow them to take
into custody the four hijackers along with Abu Abbas and his bodyguard,
Ozzuddin Badrakkan, who also was suspected of direct involvement in the
hijacking conspiracy. At about 3 A.M. GMT President Reagan ordered the U.S.
troops to “stand down” and allow the Italians to take custody of the six men.[16] The four hijackers were arrested and held in Sicily for several days while Abu Abbas and his bodyguard
again boarded the EgyptAir plane which flew them to Rome.
The Craxi government refused U.S. requests to arrest them on various
pleas, including the claim that Abu Abbas, as a PLO official, enjoyed
diplomatic immunity and also pleading a lack of evidence linking him to the
hijacking. Despite constant U.S. demands to arrest the two men, or at least to
prevent their departure, Italy permitted both men to leave for Yugoslavia on 12
October, in spite of U.S. claims of having evidence “based on sensitive
intelligence” that Abu Abbas actually had directed the hijacking.[17] The Yugoslavians also refused to extradite or
to try Abu Abbas who later was reported to have left for South Yemen and who
eventually found refuge in Iraq.
The
Political and Legal Fallout of the Achille Lauro Affair
Prime
Minister Craxi’s several decisions that stymied U.S.
attempts to seize the hijackers and Abu Abbas led to strained relations between
Italy and the United States. They also triggered the resignation of Craxi’s government on 18 October 1985 after
the Defense Minister, Giovanni Spandolini, withdrew his Republican Party from
the governing five party coalition government two days earlier in protest
against Craxi’s actions. Craxi would lead an interim government and eventually
win parliamentary approval on 8 November 1985 to form a new government. Ironically the Craxi government, which had
tried so much to appease the PLO and Arab governments in its handling of the Achille Lauro affair, faced another
Palestinian terrorist attack upon
Italian soil on 27 December 1985 when gunmen of the Abu Nidal faction, in
coordinated attacks in both Rome and Vienna, murdered 18 travelers and wounded
60 others.
While
Washington was angry at President Mubarak for
his deception and refusal to hand over the hijackers, the U.S. action in intercepting the EgyptAir flight
itself triggered anti-U.S. resentment and demonstrations in Egypt and other Arab nations. The
governments of Egypt and Jordan were also irritated and embarrassed by the
duplicity of Yassir Arafat for his apparent involvement in the Achille Lauro hijacking at the same time
that his PLO was involving their governments in purported joint peace
initiatives with Israel. The Tunisian government, still in shock from the
Israeli air raids earlier that month, found itself now embarrassed over the Achille Lauro operation that had been
set in motion from its own territory and also found itself accused by Egypt and
other Arab states of caving in to U.S. pressures for having denied landing
rights to the EgyptAir flight carrying the hijackers. Following the Achille Lauro fiasco, for which Abu Abbas
and his followers were responsible, the Tunisian government ordered Abu Abbas
and the PLF to leave and they then moved to Baghdad, Iraq.
On
11 October 1985 Marilyn Klinghoffer, with three other former hostages,
identified the four hijackers in a police lineup in Sicily. On 16 October Israel’s military
intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Ehud Barak,
revealed the transcripts of intercepted radio communications between Abu
Abbas and the hijackers which indicated that he was not merely a mediatory, as
he and Yassir Arafat maintained, but rather was the mastermind of the operation
and giving orders to the four hijackers of the Achille Lauro.[18] Israeli authorities also claimed to have
intelligence indicating that Arafat himself played a knowing and controlling
role in these events.[19]
By 17 October following much cross-examination of the four suspects along with
ample testimony by Captain de Rosa and crew members, the Italian investigators
in Sicily concluded that the hijackers’ claim that they had originally intended
to attack Ashdod, a position which seemed to crumble under interrogation, was a
ruse and that a stand-alone hijacking had been the original plan. According to this original plan the ship
would be sailed near to the Syrian port
of Tartus where PLF
comrades ashore would take the American hostages off the cruiser who would be
held in PLF safe-houses until the 50 Palestinian prisoners were released.[20]
It should be noted that
most American and Israeli experts continue to endorse the explanation that the
PLF hijacking was a spontaneous improvised response to their having been
discovered by an errant cabin steward.
However the Italian investigators concurred that the testimonies of both
the accused hijackers and eye-witnesses did not confirm the account of their
having been supposedly surprised and exposed while there were serious
discrepancies in the testimony claiming that the port of Ashdod
was the intended target.
Ironically
the first suspect to break down and collaborate with Italian investigators was
Magied al Molqi, the hijackers’ leader who had also killed Leon Klinghoffer: he
confessed that the hijackers had been acting on the written orders of Abu
Abbas.[21] As other hijackers broke down and began
talking, naming accomplices and contacts, the judicial authorities began issuing
more arrest warrants. Whereas Prime
Minister Craxi had insisted that the United
States lacked any proof of Abu Abbas’ involvement by 23
October 1985 the magistrates in Sicily
had issued an arrest warrant for Abu Abbas.
Genoa’s magistrates lost little time
asserting their right to try the case under Italian maritime law, since Genoa was the home port of
the Achille Lauro, and they shortly
assumed full jurisdiction over the case.
On
11 November 1985 Luigi Carli, one of the Genoa prosecutors assigned to the
case, announced 16 arrest warrants had been issued. The four captured hijackers, including the
leader Magied Youssef al Molqi, 23 years old; Ahmad Marrouf al-Assadi, 23 years
old, Ibrahim Fatayer Abdelatif, 20 years old, and Bassam al-Ashkar, 17 years
old, were charged with hijacking, kidnapping, murder, and various charges
involving the illegal possession of firearms and explosives. Also charged and
already in custody were Mohammad Khalaf and Mohammad Issa Abbas, the latter a
close relative of Abu Abbas, for their roles in bringing the arms and
explosives from Tunis to the hijackers in Genoa. Those charged but still at large included
Abu Abbas and his bodyguard, Ozzuddin
Badrakkan, who both had been freed on 12 October; Ibrahim Hassir, a PLO official;
Abu Kitah and Mohammad al-Khadra, who had procured the arms later sent to
Genoa; Ziad al-Omar, who was believed to have directed the operation both in
Tunis and Genoa, and Masar Kadia, 49 years old, who had scouted out the Achille Lauro and who later handled and
accompanied the four on the cruise ship as far as Alexandria where he
debarked. Those in custody were convicted on 18 November 1985 on the arms
and explosives charges, and sentenced to jail terms ranging from four to nine
years. The most severe sentence of nine
years was imposed on Muhammad Issa Abbas, who had delivered Abu Abbas’
instructions to the four hijackers. Although he had been arrested in late
September on charges of possessing falsified passports while remaining in
custody he had revealed nothing of the planned operation to the authorities. By
securing the conviction of the hijackers on these lesser charges prosecutors
could hold them in prison while they could more thoroughly prepare to try them
on the more serious charges of murder and piracy.[22]
Later on 27 November 1985 the Klinghoffer family filed two lawsuits, one in the
State Supreme Court in Manhattan suing the PLO for $1.5 billion, and another in
Federal District Court in Manhattan suing Chandris-Italy Inc, the Port of
Genoa, and Club ABC Tours Inc., for compensatory and punitive damages. [23]
In
1986 Abu Abbas would be tried in absentia in Italy and convicted on charges of
conspiracy in connection with the Achille
Lauro hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer but would never be
extradited to Italy from his safe-haven in Iraq. Similarly Italy would seek to extradite Masar Kadia from Greece in 1991.
On 30 May 1990 members of the
Abu Abbas faction of the PLF, with Libyan support, made a seaborne attack on
Tel Aviv beaches that was quashed by the Israeli Defense Forces. Four of the
PLF terrorists were killed and 12 captured. This raid occurred in the
eighteenth month of talks between the United States and the PLO. While
Yassir Arafat disavowed any PLO connection with the raid, he also would not
publicly condemn the raid nor expel Abu Abbas from the PLO Executive Committee.
This in turn prompted the United
States to suspend its dialogue with the PLO.
Later in 1991 Abu Abbas resigned his membership in the PLO Executive Committee
but retained his seat on the Palestine National Council.
The 1993 Oslo
Accords were regarded by many nations, with the exception of the United States and Israel, as signaling a de facto amnesty
towards PLO members wanted for terrorist offenses. In 1995 an immunity
accord was completed between Israel
and the PLO constituting a general amnesty and granting immunity from
prosecution for all PLO members for violent acts committed before September
1993. Subsequently Abu Abbas could travel freely from Iraq back and forth to the
territories under control of the Palestinian Authority to take part in PLO
business. On 22 April 1996 Abu
Abbas, who was still wanted by the United States
for his role in the Achille Lauro hijacking, attended the Palestine
National Council meeting held in Gaza.
During his presence at this meeting Abu Abbas repeatedly stated to reporters
that the Achille Lauro affair “was a mistake and it led to other
mistakes.” He claimed that his men did not know Leon Klinghoffer was Jewish or
American but that they had killed him “because he started to incite the
passengers against them.” By early August 1997 the Palestine Liberation
Organization had agreed to settle the civil lawsuit brought against it by the
Klinghoffer family. Rejecting the PLO claim that as a sovereign state it could
not be sued Federal District Judge Louis L. Stanton ordered Yassir Arafat to
give a deposition.[24] Instead the PLO moved to settle the dispute out
of court and to pay the surviving Klinghoffer daughters an undisclosed sum.[25]
Following the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, Abu Abbas was captured by U.S. troops on 14 April 2003 at the PLF training
base in Baghdad.
He was held as a prisoner in Iraq
under U.S.
custody until 8 March 2004 when he died apparently of natural causes.
Conclusion: Pre-Planned Hijacking or Impromptu
Improvisation?
In
retrospect it may appear to some that the entire operation had the
foreknowledge and blessing of Yassir Arafat, and was just another example of a
repeated pattern of covert attacks ordered by him and carried out by proxies,
whose roles could then be covered up by plausible denials, followed by the
offer of Arafat and the PLO to use their good offices as mediators to solve the
crisis. Whereas many western leaders and
policy experts seemed to accept at face-value Arafat’s denial of PLO
involvement in the hijacking and to welcome his role as a mediator, by contrast
both Egypt’s President Hosni
Mubarak and Jordan’s
King Hussein regarded Arafat as being directly responsible for the hijacking
and guilty of duplicity and even of personal treachery in the matter. Egypt’s
role in trying to resolve the Achille
Lauro crisis cost Mubarak political goodwill with the United States. Likewise it cost King Hussein his credibility
with Britain for Jordan’s recent efforts to mediate with Britain
vouching for the PLO as a party earnestly seeking a peace settlement. For awhile King Hussein contemplated
dissociating himself completely from the PLO and negotiating directly with Israel over the issue of the occupied
territories in the West Bank[26]
The
question remains: Was the takeover of
the Achille Lauro merely a tactical
blunder occasioned by the haphazard intrusion of a cabin steward upon the PLF
gunmen while they were cleaning their weapons? Or was it rather a premeditated
hijacking aimed at forcing the PLO’s agenda back into the forefront of the
world’s consciousness by threatening to kill hundreds of citizens of nations other
than Israel,
in short, a quintessentially terrorist operation? While the consensus of U.S. and Israeli experts and commentators favors
the view that an attack on Israeli soil was the original motive there are
problems with this hypothesis: Previous
attempts by the PLF to attack Israel
using inflatable landing craft, hang-gliders, and the like, had not proven very
effective. Although smuggling the arms
and explosives abroad the Achille Lauro
seemed relatively easy the next stage of smuggling them into Israel through Ashdod customs and Israeli port security
would not be so easy. If the plan had
been to attack the port of Ashdod from the decks of the Achille Lauro, in effect
using the civilian cruise liner and its passengers as human shields, then there
was still a terrorist threat directed indiscriminately at all the nationalities
on board and not directed simply at Israel in particular. In effect this would have been no less
heinous than simply seizing the cruise ship on the high seas and using its crew
and passengers as hostages. The other
problem was that noted by the Italian investigators: the testimonies of the suspects on the
supposed Ashdod plan were inconsistent and contradictory: At one point suspects said a crew member had
spotted them cleaning their guns but at another point the suspects also claimed
that they had been recognized by Egyptian port authorities and had decided to
seize the ship then. Some of the
suspects, in particular Bassam al Ashkar, stated that they had never been
surprised by any crew member, that the Ashdod attack account was in fact a
fabrication, and that he had been instructed by al Molqi that they were going
to seize the ship.
While
preparations for the Achille Lauro
venture had been in the works for over ten months prior to the hijacking the
inspiration for the final form of this operation more likely may have come from
a more recent and very dramatic hostage situation which proved itself very
successful from the viewpoint of the terrorists who perpetrated it, namely the
hijacking of TWA flight 847 on 14 June 1985.
Shiite gunmen in this hijacking seized 145 passengers and 8 crew
members. One American serviceman among the hostages was killed and 39 American
men were held hostage in Lebanon
until the leader of Lebanon’s
Shiite AMAL militia, Nabih Berri, negotiated their release in exchange for 119
Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners held in Israel’s Atlit Prison. Berri, whose own gunmen played a principal
role in the hijacking and hostage-taking incident was portrayed in western
media as a negotiator and mediator. The
seizure of a large number of western hostages on a cruise liner could similarly
lead to a negotiated settlement in which the PLO might wind up being hailed as
a mediator and peace-maker, “saving” the hostages, and conceivably gaining
freedom for PLO prisoners in Israel.
There
was a Palestinian precedent for attempting such an operation, namely the “Black
September” attack on the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics,
which also had been a hostage-barricade siege in which the hostage-takers
demanded the release of 234 prisoners in Israel, including the surviving
Japanese Red Army member who took part in the Lod Airport massacre of May 1972.[27]
While the PLO denied responsibility for those attacks it later became well
established that Black September was a PLO creation led by PLO Executive
Committee member Salah Khalaf, also known as “Abu Iyad,” who later even wrote
his memoirs about his role in the operation.[28]
The
other precedent set by Yassir Arafat for staging terrorist events through
proxies and then gaining credit for himself as a mediator or peace-maker is the
curious record of the Abu Nidal Organization.
The public perception was that Abu Nidal was a maverick Palestinian PLO
member who broke away from the main organization and who became an archenemy
not only of the State of Israel but also of the main PLO body and of Yassir
Arafat. Yet according to the analysis of Michael A. Ledeen this was entirely a
deception pulled off by Arafat himself in order to confuse both his foreign
enemies, in particular Israel
and the United States,
but also his Palestinian rivals within the PLO.
According to the account given by
Ion Mihai Pacepa, the head of the Romanian intelligence service, who defected
to the United States in the late 1970s, the Abu Nidal Organization was actually
created by Arafat as a covert operation to allow him to strike at both
non-Palestinian enemies, whether U.S. or Israeli targets, outside of the
officially delimited area for operations within “Occupied Palestine” allowing
the PLO to disclaim knowledge or responsibility for such actions. According to this source, the Abu Nidal
Organization could be used by Arafat also to strike at rivals within the PLO
who might undermine his position. The menace of the Abu Nidal organization also
allowed Arafat and the PLO to present themselves as the “moderate” and
“reasonable” voice in the Palestinian movement.[29]
Therefore
the problem for Arafat and the PLO was not any lack of willingness to engage in
covert terrorist actions, under the cover of plausible denial, from which to
reap political benefits. Nor was there any lack of motivation, since the
outcome of the TWA 847 hijacking demonstrated that such an action could be
successful and benefit the PLO. The
problem rather was that of execution: For a mere four hijackers to seize and
hold a multi-deck cruise ship, full of myriad passageways, hidden service
conduits and crawl spaces, with over 700 passengers and close to 350 crew
members would be a formidable task. The
success of Anna Hoerantner in evading capture illustrates this problem. This
would explain why the hijackers would wait to seize the vessel only after the
ship had unloaded over 600 passengers for their temporary sightseeing tour of the
Pyramids. However, unlike the TWA 847
hijacking, or even the 1979 occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the actual venue of the hijacking on
the high seas remained cut off from any possibility of minute-by-minute
instantaneous global press coverage.
Therefore the hijacking unfolded without creating the sort of constant
coverage feeding high public emotion and outrage that had helped pressure the
U.S. and Israeli government decision-makers into making concessions in the TWA
847 case that undermined their ability to maintain a steadfast and consistent
position in the face of terrorist manipulation.
Interestingly there have been no noteworthy attempts by any other
terrorist groups to try to replicate the Achille
Lauro incident by hijacking another cruise liner.
Unfortunately
the only persons who could have verified whether the hijacking was intended as
a stand-alone action, namely Yassir Arafat and Abu Abbas, died without ever
confirming this in spoken word or writing.
The idea that Ashdod was the original
intended target of the hijackers may be attractive to Western observers outside
of Israel
for a psychological reason: the need to believe that the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict can in fact be mediated and solved through some combination of
good-will, rationality, self-interest, and skillful diplomacy. The images of Arafat’s character and of PLO
politics that are most consistent with the ‘stand-alone’ hypothesis are those
of a deceptive and intransigent party that in fact would be incapable of making
a lasting peace. And that hypothesis clashes with the perennial optimism and
faith in human progress and rationality that must underlie any hope for peace
in the Middle East. Even with the 2006 Hamas political victory in the Palestinian
Authority, U.S. and other western diplomats, as well as well-meaning people
elsewhere, continue to speak of the possibility of Hamas somehow accepting the
existence of the State of Israel in the teeth of the Hamas Covenant calling for
the extermination of Israel, in the face
of Hamas’ leaders repeated calls for destroying Israel, and in spite of the
over 60 suicide-bombings sponsored by Hamas over the five year period preceding
their election. Even with so much evidence to the contrary U.S. and other
western observers wish to believe, hoping against hope, that there is still
some possibility for reconciliation, compromise and peace. Likewise at the time of the Achille Lauro crisis both the world
public and western leaders wanted to believe that Yassir Arafat and the PLO were
earnestly seeking to mediate that crisis and not simply exploiting it for
political gain.
It
is more perplexing to understand why Israeli analysts, who have had a much more
pessimistic assessment of Arafat and the PLO leadership, endorsed the view that
the hijackers originally intended to attack Ashdod and not simply hijack the ship. If the objective of an attack on Ashdod were ruled out
then the Achille Lauro incident would
become almost completely detached from Israeli concerns, apart from the murder and
mistreatment of Jewish individuals at the hands of the hijackers: None of the passengers were Israeli citizens.
The cruise ship was not an Israeli vessel (but could one even begin to imagine
an Israeli cruise liner with the lax security of the Achille Lauro?) The incident did not take place in Israeli
territorial waters. Israel
felt no need to make any concessions to the hijackers. However for Israel,
stressing the Ashdod connection helps to make it clear to nations such as
Italy, France, and others, that as long as Israel remains the target of
Palestinian terrorism that the nationals, ships and territories of these other
nations will not be protected from the scourge of that same terrorism no matter
what separate political accommodations they make between their own nations and
the PLO, and no matter how much they attempt to distance themselves from being
associated with Israel.
The
reader is left with two conflicting interpretations of the real purposes and
motives behind the Achille Lauro
hijacking. Nor is this a merely “theoretical” concern: At the time these actual
events were unfolding these same disagreements over how to interpret and assess
the crisis also caused great rifts and conflicts between allies both in the
NATO alliance as well as in the Arab world.
Nor can anyone rule out that events similar to the Achille Lauro hijacking will not be repeated in the 21st
century.
References
Books:
Anderson, Sean K. and Stephen Sloan: Terrorism: Assassins to Zealots, Lanham,
Maryland:
Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Bohn, Michael K: The
Achille Lauro Hijacking; Lessons in the Politics and Prejudice
of Terrorism. Washington DC:
Brassey’s Inc. 2004.
Cassese,
Antonio. Terrorism, Politics, and Law:
The Achille Lauro Affairs.
Princeton: NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Jenkins, Vlad The
Achille Lauro Hijacking.: Boston: President and
Fellows of Harvard
College, 1988.
Leavitt, Geoffrey M. Democracies
Against Terror: The Western Response to State-
Sponsored Terrorism. Washington
Paper, pub. Center for Strategic and International
Studies. New York: Praeger, 1988
Simon, Jeffry D. The Implications of the Achille Lauro
Hijacking For the Maritime Community.
(RAND Papers Series) Santa
Monica, Ca.: RAND, 1986.
Book
Chapters:
Oliverio,
Annamarie. “Chapter 4. (Re)Constructing
the Event: The Achille Lauro Plot.” In
The State of Terror,
by Annamarie Oliverio, Albany, NY:
State University
of New York Press, 1998.
Wills,
David C. “Hijacking of the Achille Lauro”
in The First War on Terrorism:
Counter-Terrorism Policy
During the Reagan Administration. Lanham,
MD:
Rowman
& Littlefield, 2003.
Articles:
Briand,
J.P. “The Achille Lauro Rescue,” in The Maine Observer, Vol.
65, No. 329,
p. 117, 1995.
Contributors:
Sean K. Anderson is Professor of Political
Science at Idaho State University. From 1980 to 1982, Dr. Anderson worked as
chief editor in the International Department of the Pars News Agency in Tehran, Iran. He has published several studies concerning
state sponsorship of terrorism in the Middle East,
including articles in Conflict Quarterly
and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. Together with Stephen Sloan he has published
the Historical Dictionary of Terrorism
(Scarecrow Press, 2002, 2nd Ed,) Dr. Anderson also works with
state and local emergency planning and disaster relief agencies.
Mailing Address:
Sean K. Anderson
P.O. Box 8147
Pocatello, ID 83201
Peter N. Spagnolo teaches counterterrorism/antiterrorism and
SWAT tactics at The Government Training Institute in Boise, Idaho.
He holds a Master of Arts in Diplomacy from Norwich University
and served over 20 years in the US Army. For his last eleven years
of service, he was a member of the 5th Special Forces Group where he worked closely
with militaries and governments of states throughout the Middle East and Africa.
Mailing Address:
Peter N. Spagnolo
8814 West Goose Creek Road
Boise, ID 83714
.
Endnotes