Hijacking Ends; American Killed : 4 Palestinians Give Up; N.Y. Man’s Body Thrown in Sea, Captain Says

Four Palestinian hijackers who held 511 hostages aboard an Italian luxury cruise liner surrendered Wednesday and were promised safe passage out of Egypt, as the Italian prime minister and the ship’s captain announced that an elderly American tourist had been killed and his body thrown overboard.

Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi was the first to reveal that passenger Leon Klinghoffer, 69, of New York, had died during the 51-hour crisis on the liner Achille Lauro. Klinghoffer, confined to a wheelchair by two strokes, had been traveling with his wife, Marilyn, 58. She was apparently not harmed.

Early today, the cruise ship steamed into port under Egyptian government orders. It was not immediately clear whether the passengers and crew were allowed to leave the vessel. An earlier search for explosives had turned upnothing, but the government apparently decided a further search was necessary.

Late Wednesday, the ship’s captain, Gerardo de Rosa, said in a radio conversation with state-run Italian television that a terrorist who had blood on his clothing admitted to the murder. The captain spoke from the ship, which was then still anchored 15 miles outside Port Said, where the hijackers surrendered.

Asked whether he could confirm the killing, De Rosa said: “Unfortunately, yes. How it happened is difficult to explain in a few words. However, they told me, ‘Now we have killed one.’

“They told me shortly after they killed him, I think, because the Palestinian who killed him had pants and shoes covered with blood.”

De Rosa, who had said in earlier radio transmissions that all of the passengers were safe, said he learned of the killing at 3:05 p.m. Tuesday, the day after the pirates commandeered the ship, while it was outside the Syrian port of Tartus. “They made me write it down and told me to call Tartus,” he said.

The White House and the State Department later confirmed that Klinghoffer, one of 16 Americans aboard the ship when the terrorists took control, was killed by the hijackers.

“While we welcome the release of the passengers and crew of the Achille Lauro, we are saddened and outraged at this brutal killing of an innocent American,” White House spokesman Larry Speakes said.

Speakes said that U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Nicholas A. Veliotes, dispatched to the ship by President Reagan, confirmed Klinghoffer’s death.

In a ship-to-shore radio transmission monitored by Independent News Network, Veliotes told U.S. officials here to call the Egyptian foreign minister, “tell him the circumstances” of Klinghoffer’s death and “insist that they prosecute those sons of bitches.”

Veliotes also said that after Klinghoffer was killed, the terrorists, all believed to be members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a Syrian-backed splinter group of the PLO, threatened the life of another American passenger.

‘She Goes Next’

According to Veliotes, Capt. De Rosa was shown the passport of Mildred Hodes, 64, of Springfield, N.J., and was told by a terrorist, “She goes next.”

“She pleaded for her life,” the ambassador said.

The terrorists responded, “OK, but you tell those Syrians that we’ve killed two.”

It was not immediately clear why Klinghoffer was singled out, although he was Jewish.

During the hijacking, the most ambitious act of piracy in 25 years, the Palestinians forced the 23,269-ton cruise liner to sail an erratic course around the Mediterranean Sea. The liner was seized Monday, hours after it left the Egyptian port of Alexandria, where more than 600 passengers had disembarked for a bus tour of the pyramids. Bound for Port Said, it was first diverted to Tartus, where the Syrian government denied it permission to land. Then it veered toward Cyprus and returned to Egyptian waters early Wednesday.

The captain also disclosed how the four pirates gained control of the ship. He said they made their move at 1:30 p.m. Monday, when the ship was off the Egyptian coast, and fired Soviet-made submachine guns and brandished hand grenades.

One terrorist came onto the bridge, “fired some shots in the ground and screamed in Arabic and told me to head to Tartus,” De Rosa said. The other terrorists herded the passengers onto a lower deck, he said.

“I was continually guarded on the bridge with a submachine gun,” the captain continued.

He said the terrorists, who had demanded the release of 50 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel as well as freedom for other Palestinians imprisoned elsewhere, had hoped to find asylum in Syria.

When Syrian authorities, under pressure from the United States, Italy and other Western countries, refused Tuesday to let the ship enter its waters, the hijackers told the captain to head toward Libya, he said.

Passenger Interviewed

An American passenger who was held captive on the ship said in an interview Wednesday that the hijackers separated the U.S. citizens from other passengers and threatened them with flammable liquids during their ordeal.

Seymour Meskin of Short Hills, N.J., a friend and traveling companion of the Klinghoffers, said in an interview with CBS television that some of the Americans were struck by the terrorists, but were not badly beaten.

The Americans, segregated from the other passengers, were forced to sit in the hot sun on the open deck of the liner. Two barrels of flammable liquids were placed next to them and the hijackers threatened to light fires if anyone moved.

“One of the terrorists in particular, a short young fellow, seemed to have it in for the Americans,” Meskin said. “He kept browbeating us and threatening us.”

Contrasting Accounts

De Rosa’s and Meskin’s accounts contrasted sharply with the announcement from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry early Wednesday that the ordeal was over and that all aboard were safe. “There had been no episodes of violence,” a Foreign Ministry statement had said.

The Foreign Ministry had negotiated the hijackers’ surrender in cooperation with Italian authorities and two representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization dispatched here by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

“The problem of the vessel has been solved,” Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel Meguid announced. “The four hijackers have left the ship and are heading out of Egypt.”

The foreign minister said the hijackers had made no demands except safe passage out of Egypt. He would not say where they would go.

Egyptian security officials said early today that the four Palestinians--whose number was originally put at between seven and 12--were in custody here. But, in Washington, Speakes said, “We do not know where they are.”

The first indication that the ordeal was about to end Wednesday came in radio communications between Port Said and the liner when it reached Egyptian waters.

PLO Negotiates

An unidentified official of the PLO, using the nom de guerre Abu Khaled but believed to be Abul Abbas, leader of one wing of the Palestine Liberation Front, persuaded the four hijackers to leave the ship and to meet in a launch sent to the liner with another Palestinian official.

Abu Khaled told the hijackers that the Palestinian official “is known to you” and would produce a “secret sign” that would prove his legitimacy to negotiate. There were indications that the second Palestinian was Hani Hassan, a top political adviser to Arafat.

Several hours later, as dusk fell over the Port Said complex, a gray tugboat towing two wooden launches steamed into the harbor.

Suddenly, a group of Palestinians lining the embankment near a monument to Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal, began to shout “the fedayeen”--the guerrillas--and waved their arms frantically over their heads.

Two figures on the tugboat, hijackers of the Achille Lauro, began waving back to the small crowd on the embankment, where weary officials from the Italian Consulate had gathered to await the arrival of the Achille Lauro.

Comments From Arafat

Arafat, who earlier condemned the hijacking as a “stupid” act, said in a press conference in Tunis, Tunisia, that he still does not know the identities of the hijackers but said he has asked the Egyptian government “to turn them over to the PLO for trial if they turn out to be Palestinians.”

“We will put them on trial,” he declared.

He said he did not know how the gunmen were finally persuaded to surrender but added, “As far as I know, none of their conditions were met.” He said the negotiations had lasted 12 hours.

Arafat again denied PLO responsibility for the hijacking of the ship and expressed satisfaction that the drama had ended. “Because we are the victims of terrorism, we are against any kind of terrorism against civilians,” he said.

Later, in an interview with ABC News, Arafat said he wanted to “offer my condolences, the condolences of the PLO,” to Klinghoffer’s family.

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

Confusion has surrounded the Achille Lauro hijacking from the very beginning. Although Egyptian officials said Wednesday that four hijackers had surrendered to them, Italian Prime Minister Craxi quoted the captain as saying the terrorists warned “there were 20 of them, armed with machine guns, plastic bombs and explosives with electronic detonators.”

Conflicting Radio Reports

Tuesday was marked by conflicting radio reports from the ship, which were monitored in Beirut, in the Syrian capital of Damascus and by a fishing radio link in Spain. Hijackers said in those radio transmissions that they had killed one hijacker and were prepared to kill a second unless several ambassadors in Syria came to the ship to open negotiations.

Late Tuesday, however, a man identifying himself as the captain said in a radio call to a Beirut radio station that all aboard were accounted for and “in good health.”

Craxi’s comments Wednesday added to the confusion, for he said the captain had deduced that Klinghoffer was dead when he checked the passports of all those aboard and could not account for the New York man.

“No body has been found aboard the Achille Lauro and (the captain) therefore thinks the man was killed and then thrown into the sea during the movements of the ship,” Craxi said.

Craxi said that De Rosa, the captain, said he did not know the details of Klinghoffer’s death, only that “there is an American passport but no one to claim it--that is, there is a missing person.”

In a separate news conference, Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti revealed that his government learned early on in the hijacking that the Italian passengers aboard the ship were not in danger.

Comment From Italy

When asked why the hijackers had seized a ship from Italy, which has had warmer relations with Palestinian groups than most other European nations, Andreotti said, “I don’t think they were particularly opposed to Italy, since the first messages yesterday (Tuesday) morning said the Italians (aboard) could consider themselves safeguarded.”

He speculated that “probably they thought that a cruise ship with no weapons on board, with many foreigners, among them many Americans, some of Jewish origin, could be a good target for using pressure.”

Andreotti said that if the pirates’ demands to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners had persisted, “We would not have accepted it.

“Firmness prevailed,” he said. “We made no concessions. The only shadow is the death of the American. It is a victory for the West and shows that a universal conscience refutes this kind of terrorism.”

Craxi called the hijacking “a terrible adventure which could have ended in tragedy and which has been happily resolved except for the American victim.”

Craxi Offers Thanks

The prime minister thanked Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Cyprus “for the friendly cooperation” and added special thanks to Arafat, “who expressed his condemnation and helped seek a solution.”

He also said Italy collaborated closely with the governments of the United States, Britain and West Germany.

Craxi has been under fire from political opponents in Italy for the unusual warmth of his relations with Arafat, whom he has visited in Tunis and received in Rome. Following the Israeli bombing raid against PLO headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia, last week, he condemned the raid so vigorously that relations between Italy and Israel have been strained as a result.

In his news conference, the prime minister barely concealed his irritation with the Israelis.

“Tomorrow we will take a balance of the situation and evaluate the contributions of friendly governments and the hostile attitudes of others,” he said.

Asked if he counted Israel as having a “hostile attitude,” he said, “You read the newspapers as I do.”

Charles P. Wallace reported from Port Said and Don A. Schanche from Rome. Also contributing was Times staff writer Michael Ross in Tunis.