Hijacking Leaves Italian Officials Embarrassed : They Ponder Key Question: How Did Just 4 Gunmen Commandeer the Ship?

How only four hijackers managed to commandeer the luxury cruise liner Achille Lauro remained a mystery Wednesday, although it appeared that the Palestinian gunmen boarded the ship in Genoa by posing as passengers and carried forged or stolen passports.

Italian authorities, who credited their low-key approach for bringing a swift resolution to the two-day crisis, acknowledged that they are still uncertain how the whole thing came about.

But despite the air of self-congratulation here, some Italian bureaucrats remained red-faced about how the hijackers pulled it off.

In Genoa, the port’s police chief, Antonio Passaro, said he could not believe that the pirates had used false passports to board the posh cruise liner before it raised its gangplanks on Oct. 3 to begin a planned journey of 11 nights and 12 days in the sunny eastern Mediterranean.

Procedures Defended

“All documents appeared to be in order,” Passaro said. His view was supported by the Medoc Maritime Agency, which handled the boarding procedures for the Achille Lauro. The formalities were so strict that no one could have boarded clandestinely, the agency’s spokesman said.

“There are only three accesses to the ship when it boards at Ponte dei Mille maritime station (at Genoa),” the spokesman said. “There is a gangplank for the crew, one to bring supplies on board to the galley and a third for technical equipment. Granted, many people go in and out, but police surveillance is usually rather thorough.”

Passengers, he said, had to pass three passport control checks.

But it appeared that there were holes in the security screen and that false or stolen passports may have been used to get the hijackers aboard in Genoa.

Press reports in Rome said the surveillance was “sleepy” and that it would have required little skill to smuggle arms and explosives onto the ship, which carried more than 1,600 pieces of luggage. Unlike airports, where electronic baggage checks are common even with checked luggage, there was no X-ray or metal-detecting equipment at the dock.

According to Rome police, at least one passenger appeared to have used a stolen Argentine passport, and the ship’s purser independently confirmed that there was something suspicious about the four men who occupied the cabin to which the spurious Argentine was assigned.

Police said that the passport of Walter Zarlenga, 23, an Argentine, was stolen last June at a church hostel used by Argentines in Rome. They said the same passport may have been used by one of the passengers assigned to Cabin 82 on the Achille Lauro’s ill-fated voyage, since the same name appeared on the passenger list for that cabin. Cabin 82 is on the port side, near the bow, of the second lowest--and least expensive--deck of the cruise ship.

Purser Santo Fico, who missed the hijacking because he went to Cairo on a daylong excursion when the ship left Alexandria, said the cabin was occupied by “four young people of dark complexion who did not participate in the festivities on board.”

One of the ship’s hostesses, Nicoletta Fasolaro, told Italian television that the four appeared oddly out of place as they walked on the sun-baked deck fully clothed as if for the street. She said she tried to engage one of the swarthy passengers in conversation by asking his nationality, and was surprised when he said he was Norwegian and abruptly ended the conversation.

Last-Minute Cancellation

Officials of Flotta Lauro, the ship’s owner, said Cabin 82 was occupied by a man carrying a passport in the name of Zarlenga, 23, as well as another Argentine named Antonio Alonco, 20; a Norwegian passport holder named Stale Wan, 20, and a man claiming to be Franco Jados, 20, with a Canadian passport. Another passenger with Yugoslav travel documents and the name of Istvan Sabo had reserved a cabin, but canceled at the last minute.

Port police said they detained a 21-year-old Palestinian named Kalaf Mohammed Zainab in Genoa a few days before the Achille Lauro sailed and found two false passports--one Iraqi and the other Moroccan--in his possession. Police said they were investigating the possibility that he may have been a courier carrying forged or stolen passports and weapons.

Despite the embarrassment among shipping executives and bureaucrats, the Lauro line made a gesture Wednesday designed to dispel hard feelings about whatever security failings might be suspected.

More than 600 of the passengers who missed the hijacking because of their excursion to the Pyramids and other Egyptian sights returned to Rome on two chartered Alitalia jumbo jets from Cairo.