When vacationers boarded the Achille Lauro in Genoa on Oct. 4, 1985, the promised ports of call included stops in Egypt, Israel, and Greece.
But four passengers had their own hellish itinerary.
“An Innocent Bystander: The Killing of Leon Klinghoffer” tells the awful story of Palestinian terrorists hijacking an Italian cruise ship. It details how one shot an elderly American invalid and threw him overboard.
It also explains how competing governments, complicated treaties and outright lies kept the four attackers from ever facing American justice.
Reporter Julie Salamon strives to be scrupulously fair. Her book focuses not only on the captives but also on the captors. Yet readers may find it difficult to share her evenhandedness, especially as they relive the terrible story.
With a lovely apartment in Greenwich Village and a vacation condo down the Jersey Shore, Marilyn and Leon Klinghoffer could have afforded better accommodations than this slightly run-down ocean liner.
Still, two strokes had left Leon, 69, partially paralyzed. Brochures showed a vessel that seemed wheelchair accessible
And so, with their 36th anniversary coming up, and Marilyn’s 58th birthday, they decided to celebrate at sea. A small group of friends agreed to join them. Spirits were high when everyone boarded in Genoa.
Four other passengers, though, remained oddly silent.
Two were Argentinian, one was Portuguese, and the fourth was Norwegian. At least, that’s what their passports said. Yet when crewmembers tried chatting with them in their native languages, the men remained silent.
The ship had just pulled into Alexandria when a cabin boy came into the men’s room to make up the beds. When he moved their luggage, the muzzle of an AK-47 popped out.
The boy left hurriedly. The men looked at each other. Their original plan had been to slip ashore in Israel and stage an attack. Now, they would have to improvise.
Meanwhile, most of the passengers had disembarked for a scheduled excursion to the pyramids; the day-trippers would rejoin the ship at Port Said. About 75 guests stayed onboard.
The ship pulled out.
The gunfire started soon after.
Captain Gerardo De Rosa had just stretched out on his bunk when it began. He made a quick search of the ship. When he walked into the dining room, terrified hostages and a nervous 17-year-old with an AK-47 confronted him.
“We don’t have a problem with Italians,” the boy assured him. But, he said, he and the men with him had a mission. They were not afraid to die. They would blow up the ship if they had to.
The teenager gave the captain a message to transmit to the world: The Palestinian Liberation Front had hijacked the Achille Lauro. They demanded Israel release 50 Palestinian prisoners.
In the meantime, they would be taking the ship to Syria.
The terrorists started collecting passports, noting passengers’ nationalities. When the hijackers weren’t looking, one American secretly threw away her B’nai Brith card. Another quickly tore off the chai he always wore around his neck.
The gunmen were edgy and erratic. Sometimes they would give the hostages cigarettes. Sometimes they would threaten to set fire to everything. “Arafat good!” one of them kept shouting. “Reagan bad!”
Their plans began to fall apart almost immediately.
Syria supported the Palestinian cause but loathed Yasser Arafat. Despite his claims this was not a PLO action, they remained convinced, correctly, he was somehow involved. They would not guarantee asylum.
‘We will start killing at 3 p.m.,” leader Youssef Majed al-Molqi threatened. The Syrians remained unmoved.
Molqi marched downstairs. He ordered one of the ship’s waiters to push Leon Klinghoffer, in his wheelchair, to the stern of the ship, where no one could see them. He told the waiter to leave.
Molqi shot the old man twice. Then he called over two crewmen and forced them to dump the corpse and wheelchair into the sea.
Later, Molqi handed Klinghoffer’s passport to the captain. “American, kaput!” he said. Then he showed him the passport of another American, a woman. She would be next.
The captain offered his own life in exchange. No, Molqi said. They needed him to set a new course, to Libya.
News of the hijacking traveled around the world. In Washington, the White House consulted with the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt. Meanwhile, Arafat told the PLF’s Abu al-Abbas, the operation’s mastermind, to go to Port Said and negotiate.
Calling into a radio station, Abbas told the hijackers to return to Egypt, where their safety would be assured. Once they neared Port Said, he went to meet them on a tugboat. Over the loudspeaker, he asked the captain if everyone was well.
Surrounded by armed men, De Rosa answered carefully. “All who are aboard are well,” he said.
And with that, the hijackers left. It was finally over.
Except that now, the captain had to see Marilyn Klinghoffer, and tell her what had happened to her husband.
Then he had to tell the U.S. ambassador.
Enraged, the diplomat called the Egyptian foreign minister. “Leon Klinghoffer was murdered,” he said. “And we insist that (you) prosecute those sons of bitches!”
Instead, Egypt put them on a plane for friendly Tunisia.
Back in Washington, President Ronald Reagan fumed. He met with advisers. Soon, somewhere in the Mediterranean, four F-14 Tomcats took off from the deck of the Saratoga.
They quickly, quietly, found the Egyptian passenger plane. Then they radioed the pilot that U.S. Navy fliers who would escort him to a NATO base in Italy surrounded him. If he didn’t comply, they would shoot him down.
He complied.
It seemed like a decisive end to a horrible tragedy. Then the diplomats and lawyers got involved.
The Egyptians were furious. Did the ambassador really have to insult the Palestinians by saying, “sons of bitches?” Although Egypt didn’t fight for custody of the four hijackers, they demanded and received, the plane’s other passengers.
As it happened, that included Abbas.
The Italians were enraged as well. They refused to allow the hijackers to be extradited to America. Instead, they would be tried in Italian courts – where they would be treated, not as terrorists, but as enemy combatants.
The four received sentences of up to 30 years. All were paroled early. Bassam Al-Asker, the teenager who first confronted the captain, served only five.
The absent Abbas, who the Italian court had still sentenced to life, went free, returning to the Middle East. Years after Leon Klinghoffer’s body washed up on a beach, he laughed about it. “Maybe he was trying to swim for it!” he joked.
American forces captured him during the 2003 Iraq War, and he died in jail, of natural causes.
Marilyn Klinghoffer only survived her husband by four months, dying of cancer. But before she did, she established a foundation to combat the scourge of terrorism.
She had already done something else, too.
After the hijackers were brought to Italy, Marilyn Klinghoffer and several other passengers agreed to fly there and identify them. Afterward, Marilyn walked slowly down the line of men.
She stopped at Molqi, the man who had murdered her husband. The tiny, five-foot-tall woman stared at him. Stared hard.
Then she spat in his face.
