Forest Dedicated in Israel in Memory of Cruise Ship Victim
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YATIR, Israel — Deputy Italian Prime Minister Arnaldo Forlani dedicated a forest in Israel on Sunday in memory of Leon Klinghoffer, the elderly American Jew killed in the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship.
The ambassadors of Italy and the United States also planted trees at the memorial forest, near the southern town of Beersheba.
Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old handicapped New Yorker, was shot to death and thrown off the Italian ship by Palestinian gunmen who had hijacked the vessel in the eastern Mediterranean.
The guerrillas were captured when U.S. fighters intercepted the plane on which they were flying from Egypt to Tunisia.
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