Klinghoffer’s Murder Recalled at Genoa Trial

An Achille Lauro steward testified Monday he took wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer to a Palestinian gunman, heard the shots that killed the American and helped drop his body and wheelchair overboard.

Steward Manuel de Suza was one of several witnesses who testified about the killing of Klinghoffer during the Oct. 7-9, 1985, hijacking of the Italian luxury cruise liner Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean. Fifteen men are being tried--10 of them in absentia--for the hijacking.

There are no known witnesses to the killing of Klinghoffer on Oct. 8, but Portuguese steward De Suza gave the most detailed circumstantial evidence thus far against the accused assassin, alleged hijacking leader Youssef Molki, 23.

Molki, listening from behind the steel bars of his defendant’s cage, sat impassively as De Suza pointed to him as the killer.

“I was asked to take the wheelchair to the (stern) end of the ship so that nobody would see him,” De Suza testified.

‘Nobody Said a Word’

The steward said that as he wheeled Klinghoffer, 69, of New York, away from his wife and other hostages, “nobody said a word.”

On the deck, Molki, who was armed with an assault rifle, ordered De Suza to leave him alone with Klinghoffer, the steward said.

“I heard shots ring out,” De Suza said. “When I came back I saw a hole in Klinghoffer’s chest. He was obviously dead. He (Molki) told me to throw the body into the sea.”

Ferruccio Alberti, the ship’s barber, was summoned to help, De Suza said.