Achille Lauro Crew, Not Hijackers, Rifled Ship’s Safe, Italian Probers Report

Investigators have decided that crew members--not the hijackers--cleaned out the safe of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro during last year’s Mediterranean Sea hijacking.

Passengers reported immediately after the hijacking that $2 million worth of cash and jewelry contained in 62 envelopes were stolen from the luxury liner’s safe during the three-day hijacking off Egypt in October, 1985.

Prosecutor Luigi Carli said the safe was open when the convicted ringleader of the hijack team, Youssef Molki, ordered the crew to join passengers being held at gunpoint in the main salon.

According to judicial sources, anti-terrorist investigators ruled out the Palestinian hijackers as the thieves and have instead concluded that members of the crew committed the heist.

The sources said the case was handed over to police magistrates to begin a criminal investigation.

A wheelchair-bound New Yorker, Leon Klinghoffer, 69, was killed by the hijackers and his body and chair thrown overboard. His corpse later washed ashore off Tartus, Syria.

The sources spoke to reporters on Tuesday, the first day of trial of an accused hijacker, Bassam Ashker. Three other hijackers were convicted July 10 in an Italian court in Genoa.

Ashker is being tried in a closed session in the Genoa Tribunal for Minors. He is accused of illegal arms possession, commandeering the ship and complicity in the Klinghoffer killing.