Klinghoffer Sues PLO Over Husband’s Death

The widow of Leon Klinghoffer, the crippled New Yorker slain during the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, today filed a $1.5-billion suit against the Palestine Liberation Organization and another suit against the ship’s owners and a travel agency.

The second suit, filed in U.S. District Court against Achille Lauro Lines, Chandris Cruise Lines and ABC Tours Travel Club of Union, N.J., among others, seeks an undetermined amount of money in the “wanton and coldblooded” killing of Klinghoffer, 69.

The suit against the PLO, which was believed to have instigated the hijacking, was filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan. That suit asks $1.5 billion in damages.

The family’s lawyer, Jay Fischer, filed the suits on behalf of Klinghoffer’s wife, Marilyn, and the family estate. They seek compensatory and punitive damages from the defendants.

On Vacation Cruise

Klinghoffer and his wife were on a vacation cruise aboard the Italian luxury liner when it was hijacked Oct. 7 off Port Said, Egypt.

Klinghoffer, a stroke victim who often used a wheelchair, was shot execution-style by the Palestinian pirates. Authorities have said the terrorists shot Klinghoffer twice and threw his body and wheelchair into the Mediterranean Sea.

“The time has come for the civilized world to marshal all its resources in an unrelenting effort to end terrorism . . . and place such responsibility for these acts at the doorsteps of those who commit these obscenities,” Fischer said.

Fischer said the suit against the PLO, which was delivered to the Manhattan office of its U.N. representatives today, names the treasurer of the PLO as the defendant but does not identify him.

In the suit against the cruise liner, Marilyn Klinghoffer claims that officials did not provide adequate security because they did not inspect passengers’ passports and luggage before they boarded the ship in Genoa, Italy.