Ship Hijackers Surrender; American Is Feared Killed : May Have Been Tossed Into Sea

Four Palestinian hijackers who held 511 hostages aboard an Italian luxury liner during two days of terror at sea surrendered today and were allowed to leave Egypt before it was revealed that one American tourist may have been killed.

In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi said Gerardo de Rosa, the captain of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, told him after the ordeal ended that passenger Leon Klinghoffer, 69, of New York is missing and may have been killed by his captors.

Family members said Klinghoffer, whose wife, Marilyn, was also among the hostages, suffered a stroke earlier this year and was in a wheelchair while on the ship.

U.S. officials could not confirm or deny the report.

“The captain of the ship has said that the American citizen is missing,” Craxi said. “But no body had been found aboard the Achille Lauro, and he (the captain) therefore thinks the man was killed and then thrown into the sea during the movements of the ship.”

Trying to Confirm Report

Craxi said the ship’s captain told him that the American’s death was not witnessed but was later discovered by crew members.

In Washington, a White House official, who asked not to be identified, said the Administration is trying to confirm the report of Klinghoffer’s death “before we start making any pronouncements.”

Klinghoffer family members were celebrating what they thought was the safe release today of all the American hostages aboard the cruise ship when they were stunned by the report that Klinghoffer had died during the ordeal.

Reached at the Klinghoffers’ Manhattan apartment, their son-in-law, Jerry Arbittier, said he had not been told his father-in-law had died. “Has this been confirmed? Has it been confirmed?” he asked.

Only half an hour earlier, Arbittier’s wife, Lisa, had told a news conference how relieved she was the hijacking was over.

‘An Incredible Feeling’

“When I first heard the news, it was an incredible feeling. I just held my breath and then I screamed, ‘Let the party begin!’ ” Lisa Arbittier said.

Egypt announced at the end of the hijacking that all passengers were safe and unharmed. And the Egyptian Foreign Ministry quoted De Rosa as saying there had been no episodes of violence.

“The problem of the vessel has been solved. The four hijackers have left the ship and are heading out of Egypt,” Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel Meguid said. “There were no preconditions. The ship will return to Port Said.”

The Egyptian government did not disclose the destination of the Palestinians.

The most ambitious act of piracy in a quarter of a century ended nearly 44 hours after heavily armed Palestinians seized the 23,629-ton Achille Lauro off the coast of Port Said and threatened to kill the hostages one by one unless Israel freed 50 Palestinian prisoners.

Caribbean Seizure in ’61

The hijacking was the first of an ocean liner since the 1961 seizure in the Caribbean of a Portuguese cruise ship carrying 967 hostages. The incident ended after two weeks with one crewman killed.

The Palestinian pirates surrendered to Egyptian authorities and left the ship, anchored about 15 miles off the coast of Port Said, after hours of negotiations with a delegation of Egyptian, Italian and Palestine Liberation Organization officials.

“Our efforts focused on working to preserve the the lives of the innocent people aboard the ship,” Meguid said. “No negotiations in the strict sense of the word were held with the hijackers.”

The guerrillas claimed to belong to a faction of the Palestine Liberation Front. Yasser Arafat’s PLO and the Syrian-based faction that opposes Arafat denied any involvement in the hijacking.

Meguid announced the surrender after a two-hour meeting with ambassadors of the United States, West Germany, Britain and Italy in Cairo.

‘We Do Not Know the Details’

But White House spokesman Larry Speakes said earlier: “We do not know the details of the arrangements that the government of Egypt made to bring about this conclusion.” Seeking to divorce the Administration from any deal to give the hijackers safe passage out of Egypt, he added, “The decision on how to resolve the crisis was one made by the Egyptian government.”

“We have made it clear . . . to all concerned that we will do everything possible to see that those responsible are brought to justice,” Speakes said.

About 100 reporters and spectators watched as an Egyptian warship that had carried PLO, Egyptian, Italian and Red Cross officials out to the liner about an hour earlier returned to the Port Said naval base carrying the hijackers. One of the Palestinians waved to the crowd.

Egyptian authorities examined the ship for possible explosives left behind by the hijackers before allowing the vessel to enter Port Said Harbor.

The Italian Foreign Ministry said new information showed that 331 crew members and 180 passengers, including 16 Americans, were aboard the liner when it was hijacked Monday. The passengers came from 17 nations. None were Israelis.

Demand for Negotiations

The ship was hijacked about 50 miles off the coast of Port Said on Monday and forced to move up the eastern Mediterranean coast to Tartus, Syria, on Tuesday, where the pirates demanded to negotiate with Western diplomats. It was during the tense standoff that the hijackers were reported at first to have killed two American hostages.

Syria, Lebanon and Cyprus refused to open their harbors to the hijackers, and the ship moved south again and anchored early today 15 miles off of the coast of Port Said, where negotiations with the PLO began.

The Achille Lauro--with nearly 1,100 passengers and crew--left the Italian port of Genoa on Oct. 3 for an 11-day Mediterranean cruise to Naples and Syracuse in Italy, Alexandria and Port Said in Egypt, Limassol in Cyprus and the Greek island of Rhodes.

More than half of the passengers, 606, got off in Alexandria on Monday for an overland trip to Cairo and Port Said. It was after the ship left Alexandria that the pirates seized the vessel.