On October 7, 1985, four men, including mastermind Muhammad Zaidan, aka Mohammed Abul al-Abbas, from the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) hijacked the Italian MS Achille Lauro liner off the coast of Egypt, as she was sailing from Alexandria to Ashdod, Israel. Holding the passengers and crew hostage, they directed the vessel to sail to Tartus, Syria, and demanded the release of 50 Palestinians then in Israeli prisons. As many of the hostages were American tourists, President Ronald Reagan deployed the Navyâ??s SEAL Team Six and Delta Force to stand by and prepare for a possible rescue attempt to free the vessel from its hijackers.
On October 8, after being refused permission by the Syrian government to dock, the hijackers murdered Leon Klinghoffer, a retired, wheelchair-bound Jewish American businessman, shooting him in the forehead and chest. They then forced the shipâ??s barber and a waiter to throw his body and wheelchair overboard. Klinghofferâ??s wife, Marilyn, who did not witness the shooting, was told by the hijackers that he had been moved to the infirmary. She only learned the truth after the hijackers left the ship at Port Said. The PLO later denied that the hijackers were responsible for the murder, and suggested that Marilyn had killed her husband for insurance money. Over a decade later, in April 1996, PLF leader Zaidan accepted responsibility, and in 1997, the PLO reached a financial settlement with the Klinghoffer family.
The Achille Lauro headed back towards Port Said, and after two days of negotiations, the hijackers agreed to abandon the liner in exchange for safe conduct. They were flown towards Tunisia aboard an Egyptian commercial airliner. The next day, October 10, the four hijackers boarded an Egypt Air Boeing 737 airliner. The plane took off from Cairo at 4:15 p.m. EST and headed for Tunisia. President Reagan approved a plan to intercept the aircraft, and at 5:30 p.m., F-14 Tomcat fighters located the airliner 80 miles south of Crete. Without announcing themselves, they trailed the airliner as it was denied permission to land at Tunis. After a request to land at the Athens airport was likewise refused, the F-14s turned on their lights and flew wing-to-wing with the airliner. The aircraft was ordered to land at Sigonella, the NATO air base in Sicily, and the pilot complied, touching down at 6:45 p.m. The hijackers were arrested soon after. The other passengers on the plane (including Zaidan) were allowed to continue on to their destination, despite protests by the United States.
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