Reports Conflict Over Execution of 2 Hijack Hostages

A hijacked Italian cruise liner steamed erratically across the eastern Mediterranean Sea on Tuesday amid conflicting reports that two hostages were executed by the Palestinian gunmen who seized the luxury ship.

Early today, the ship was reported anchored off Alexandria, Egypt, and the guerrillas were said to be negotiating with Egyptian officials.

Radio transmissions from the liner Achille Lauro, monitored in Lebanon and by other ships in the area, said the hijackers first announced that they had killed a hostage, believed to be a 40-year-old American man, as the ship neared the Syrian port of Tartus.

Western diplomatic sources in Damascus, the Syrian capital, later said a second hostage had been killed and that the gunmen had threatened to kill more unless Western diplomats agree to negotiate on the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners, most of whom are apparently being held in Israel. They also warned they would blow up the ship if naval vessels approached too closely.

In Washington, both the State Department and White House said there was no independent confirmation of reports that two American hostages had been killed.

Elizabeth Thornhill, a State Department spokeswoman, noting the conflicting reports Tuesday night, said, “It’s seeming more likely that no one has been killed.”

Israel television also reported early today that the captain of the ship told the radio tower in Cyprus that all of the passengers were well.

The confusion was created by a radio call received late Tuesday night by Beirut port authorities. They said a man aboard the ship claimed to be the captain, Gerardo de Rosa, and told them everyone on the luxury liner was in “very good health.”

“Please, please, please don’t try anything on my ship,” he pleaded, in an apparent reference to a possible rescue attempt. “Everybody is good. Everyone and everybody will be freed in a short time.”

The man, speaking in heavily accented English, could scarcely be heard because of static.

Israel radio said that the leader of the guerrillas, previously identified as Omar Mustafa, told a coastal radio station in Beirut that his commandos killed two American women. Israeli military sources identified Omar Mustafa on Tuesday as Abul Abbas, who is said to be operational head of the Palestine Liberation Front, a radical splinter faction of the PLO.

Officials here said that the ship, commandeered as it left the Egyptian port of Alexandria en route to Port Said on Monday during a 12-day cruise, was believed to have more than 400 people aboard--about 80 passengers and 330 crew members, mostly Italians. Another 670 passengers, including 72 American tourists, left the ship in Alexandria for a bus tour of the Pyramids and are now safely in Cairo.

A U.S. official said that “fewer than a dozen” Americans were believed to have remained on the ship after it left Alexandria.

Spurned by Syrian and Cypriot authorities, the Achille Lauro was reported early today to be off Alexandria. The ship was reported to have dropped anchor 15 miles from the port city.

Israeli and Egyptian radio monitors said that the guerrillas were negotiating with Egyptian officials, who refused to allow the vessel to enter Egyptian territorial waters.

The hijackers were demanding that the American, British and West German ambassadors to Egypt take part in the negotiations, the monitors said. But officials from the three embassies said the envoys were still in Cairo.

The monitors added that the hijackers were considering release of 20 women and children from among the hostages.

The guerrillas also indicated in ship-to-shore broadcasts that they were demanding the release of Palestinians in several countries, including Italy, in addition to the 50 in Israeli jails.

Knew of 6 Americans

An American tourist who left the ship in Alexandria said he knew of six Americans still believed to be on board. Frank Hodes, of Springfield, N.J., said he and his wife, Mildred, had been traveling with the group, all longtime friends, and that she and five others had chosen to skip the land portion of the cruise.

He identified the others as Silvia Sherman of Long Branch, N.J.; Viola and Seymour Meskin of Union Township, N.J.; and Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer of New York City.

First reports said the hijackers had demanded freedom for 50 Palestinians being held in Israel, but Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti later said in Rome that they are apparently seeking the release of Palestinians held in several other countries, including Italy.

Israeli television reported that the hijackers have told port authorities in Beirut and Cyprus that they want to negotiate directly with Israel. But an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said late Tuesday that there has been no such contact.

“Needless to say, we are not going to negotiate with any terrorists,” he said.

The Palestinian gunmen who seized control of the 23,629-ton vessel were apparently zigzagging around the Mediterranean, looking for a port to land after being snubbed by both Lebanon and Syria, Israel radio reported.

Turned Away by Syria

The ship steamed from Egyptian waters Tuesday and sailed to within eight miles of the Syrian port of Tartus, where it lay offshore for most of the afternoon. An Italian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Giuseppe Panocchia, said in Rome that Syrian authorities, at the request of the Italian government, refused permission for the ship to drop anchor.

Lebanese gunboats turned the ship away from Beirut.

By early evening, the liner was reported to be heading westward toward the island of Cyprus, although its final destination was still unclear.

Harbor lights at Larnaca, Cyprus, were turned off Tuesday night, and armed police officers took up positions around the port to prevent the ship from docking there, news agencies reported.

Italian naval ships were sent to the area, and four Italian air force helicopters landed at the British base of Akrotiri on Cyprus. The Italians were reported to be establishing a command center on the island. The U.S. guided missile destroyer Scott pulled out of port in Haifa, Israel, several days ahead of its scheduled departure, although it was not known whether its movements were related to the hijacked cruise liner.

Late Tuesday, a spokesman for the Spanish fishing radio link, Onda Pesquera, reported intercepting communications that indicated that the gunmen might be preparing two launches to make a nighttime getaway from the cruise liner.

Communications Intercepted

Soraya Kherfi, a spokesman for the Spanish monitor, said communications between warships in the vicinity of the Achille Lauro indicated that “two life rafts appeared to have been readied with communications apparatus.”

She said those aboard the warships believed the Palestinian hijackers might be preparing to slip away “at a place near the coast protected by the darkness.”

The international convention against taking hostages makes the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship an international crime under a treaty that became effective in June, 1983. The only signers of the treaty in the eastern Mediterranean are Egypt, Greece and Israel.

Cyprus has not signed the treaty, but a spokesman for the Cyprus mission at the United Nations said that Cyprus would prosecute any hijackers who come into its territory.

“We don’t need any more trouble,” said Maria Menico, press secretary of the mission, referring to the killings of three Israelis by pro-Palestinian terrorists last month.

It was while the Achille Lauro was lying off the Syrian coast that radio monitors reported hearing broadcasts from the ship reporting that one of the passengers had been killed.

“We can’t wait any longer,” one hijacker was quoted as saying. “We will start killing.”

‘We Are Losing Patience’

A short while later, the same hijacker reportedly said the group was preparing to kill a second passenger. “What are the developments, Tartus?” the hijacker said. “We will kill the second. We are losing patience.”

In the early Washington reports, official sources said the first reported victim was an American male, said by the hijackers to be about 40 years old. The sources said that a second person, possibly a woman crew member of the ship, also apparently was killed. Hijackers of the ship had threatened to kill one hostage per hour, and the second victim presumably died an hour after the first.

Throughout the day there was considerable confusion about the location of the ship and what was taking place on board.

At one point Egyptian officials said that a boat carrying officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization was trying to rendezvous with the cruise liner so that the PLO officials could mediate, but there was no indication that the talks actually took place.

“The British, then the Americans will be killed unless West European countries pressure Israel to meet their demands,” one Egyptian official quoted the hijackers as having said.

Terrorists Well-Armed

They were believed to be between seven and 12 heavily armed Palestinians on board the Achille Lauro, but their identities and their specific affiliations were not immediately known. They carried machine guns and explosives aboard, according to Egyptian officials.

In Tunis, Yasser Arafat’s faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization denied that it had any role in the hijacking, which in terms of sheer numbers of hostages, is one of the most ambitious ever undertaken.

It was uncertain where the guerrillas boarded the ship. Some radio reports suggested that they boarded, posing as passengers, in Genoa, Italy, where the cruise originated on Oct. 3. Other reports, also unconfirmed, said the gunmen stormed aboard Monday after the liner had sailed from Alexandria.

Longtime observers of the Palestine guerrilla movement noted that only Arafat’s wing of the PLO has ever had any significant seagoing capability with its own naval center in Yemen.

Closes Ties to Mubarak

However, Arafat has developed close relations recently with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government, and it seems unlikely that the PLO leader would endanger those relations by staging such a raid at Egypt’s doorstep.

Similarly, it was thought unlikely that Arafat would make trouble for the Italians, who were outspoken in their criticism of the Israeli air raid last week on PLO headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia.

The commandeering of the Achille Lauro was reminiscent of the hijacking in June of TWA Flight 847 after it took off from Athens. The hijackers, Shia Muslims, forced the plane to land at Beirut, then fly to Algiers and back to Beirut. They killed an American passenger and demanded the release of more than 750 Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.

In Beirut, 39 hostages were held in various places in that chaotic city and were finally freed only after Syria intervened. Israel refused to make the prisoner release in return for the hostages, but the last of the prisoners was released last month.

The Syrians were deeply embarrassed by the TWA hijacking, as the drama appeared to link Damascus with the Shia Muslim terrorists in many Western minds.

This probably accounts for Syria’s decision to turn the hijacked vessel away Tuesday, since Damascus would probably be loath to do anything further that would appear to link the country with terrorism.