Planner of ’85 Hijack Captured

Palestinian guerrilla leader Abul Abbas, mastermind of the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985, has been captured by American forces in Baghdad, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

A U.S. intelligence official said Abbas was apprehended in a raid conducted late Monday by American special operations units in a house on the outskirts of the Iraqi capital.

“It is him. He is in the hands of U.S. forces,” the official said.

Abbas’ capture came amid reports in recent days that the Marines had discovered what appeared to be a major training camp in Baghdad for the Palestine Liberation Front -- a Palestine Liberation Organization splinter group that Abbas headed when four of his guerrillas hijacked the Achille Lauro off Egypt on its way to Israel.

The hijackers demanded the release of 50 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Refused permission to dock in Tartus, Syria, the hijackers shot and killed a disabled American Jew, Leon Klinghoffer, and threw him and his wheelchair overboard.

The hijackers finally agreed to abandon the liner in return for safe conduct and were flown toward Tunisia aboard an Egyptian commercial airliner. The plane was intercepted by U.S. Navy fighters and forced to land in Sicily, where the four hijackers, along with Abbas and another PLO official, were arrested by the Italians.

Abbas was released when Italian officials said they didn’t have enough evidence to hold him. He has since been sentenced in absentia to five life terms in Italy. U.S. officials issued warrants for his arrest, but those warrants expired long ago.

Abbas, born in 1948, has spent most of the years since the hijacking in Iraq and has traveled openly in the Middle East. He remained active in Palestinian politics and was hailed as a freedom fighter. In the mid-1990s he voiced regret for the killing of Klinghoffer, saying the hijacking was a military mission gone wrong. The apology was rejected by the Klinghoffer family and the U.S.

On Tuesday, Ilsa and Lisa Klinghoffer, Leon Klinghoffer’s daughters, said in a prepared statement from New York that they hoped the United States “will be able to revive a federal indictment against Abbas for piracy, hostage taking and conspiracy, and we urge them to do so.”

“We are delighted that the murderous terrorist Abul Abbas is in U.S. custody,” they said. “While we personally seek justice for our father’s murder, the larger issue is terrorism. Bringing Abbas to justice will send a strong signal to terrorists anywhere in the world that there is no place to run, no place to hide.”

Legal experts in the United States believe Abbas could be prosecuted on grounds that his fugitive status prevented the expiration of the statute of limitations. Alternatively, he could be extradited to Italy.

As recently as January, there were reports that Abbas, also known as Muhammad Abbas, was in Cairo. U.S. State Department officials said at the time that they were unable to confirm that with Egyptian officials but pressed them to cooperate in bringing him to justice.

The U.S. intelligence official said he did not have information on what prompted the raid in Baghdad.

It was not clear whether Abbas had a connection to the large-scale training camp on the southwestern edge of Baghdad whose discovery was reported last week. The Marines also found documents indicating that Iraq had sold weapons to the PLF as recently as January for the front’s fight against Israel.

The intelligence official, however, said Abbas was not believed to be actively involved in current terrorist plots. “I think he’s been relatively dormant,” the official said.

Still, he said that Abbas could provide answers to questions about the Achille Lauro plot and potential insight into other terrorist operations.

“These terrorists tend to wade in the same cesspool, so he might provide information that’s useful,” the official said. “It’s doubtful he’d have insights regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or anything like that, or shed light on the fate of Saddam and his sons.”

The official said U.S. intelligence had provided information that helped lead to his capture but could not be more specific.

Justice Department officials were examining their options on what to do with Abbas. “Everyone is evaluating,” a law enforcement official said. “It is too early to say. It is just being assessed.”

Some legal specialists said that although Abbas could be tried in the U.S., the government may wish to pursue another solution. One possibility is to seek his extradition to Italy, where Abbas and two other fugitive Palestinian Liberation Front members were tried and convicted in absentia in 1986 for their role in the hijacking, receiving life sentences. But U.S. officials were concerned that none of the defendants was singled out as Klinghoffer’s killer.

Abbas has claimed innocence in the killing of Klinghoffer, saying he was not aboard the ship during its hijacking. And in interviews with journalists last fall, Abbas sought to distance himself from Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, denouncing the Sept. 11 attacks as a senseless act of violence against civilians.

“So far as we are concerned, [Abbas] has been a fugitive, and I don’t think the statute of limitations has run on his prosecution,” said Abraham Sofaer, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, who was the State Department legal advisor at the time of the hijacking.

High crimes, such as murder and piracy, usually lead to a statute’s suspension, especially in cases involving fugitives.

A Congressional Research Service study on the Abbas case in 1996 reached the same conclusion.

The high-seas hijacking was made into a TV movie in 1990, “Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair.” It was also the subject of an opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer.”

The Achille Lauro continued in service until 1994, when it caught fire off Somalia. Abandoned, the vessel sank.

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The Timeline of a Terrorist

Syrian roots: Abul Abbas was born in 1948 in a refugee camp in Syria after his family fled from their home near Haifa when the state of Israel was created. He became a rogue figure whose actions embarrassed his mentor, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

PLO: Abbas reportedly joined the PLO in 1964 -- one of its youngest recruits.

Achille Lauro: In October 1985, Abbas, also known as Muhammad Abbas, garnered international attention when the ship Achille Lauro was seized off Port Said, Egypt, by members of a PLO splinter group called the Palestine Liberation Front.

Hostages: Hundreds of passengers, including U.S. tourist Leon Klinghoffer and his wife of 36 years, were taken hostage. When Marilyn Klinghoffer last saw her husband alive, she had a machine gun to her head. Her husband was then shot to death. His body and wheelchair were thrown overboard. The other passengers were released after a two-day ordeal, and the hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities, who put the alleged killers on a flight to the PLO’s headquarters in Tunisia.

Fugitive: Abbas fled to Yugoslavia before a U.S. warrant for piracy and hostage-taking could be served. He disappeared, and international manhunts and a price on his head failed to flush him out. He was convicted in absentia in an Italian court and sentenced to life in prison in 1986 but never served any time.