Abbas’ Arrest Ends Family’s Long Wait

The friend hurried over to Lisa Klinghoffer during a PTA meeting at her son’s school and repeated: “They got him!”

“They got Saddam [Hussein]?” Klinghoffer asked. “No,” was the reply. “[Osama] Bin Laden?” “No,” her friend said. “They got Abbas!”

“I was just dumbfounded,” Klinghoffer said Wednesday. “I kind of froze for a second.... I always wondered what my reaction would be, and how it would affect me. I thought, ‘Thank God. Maybe we will get some justice.’ ”

Abul Abbas’ arrest Tuesday in Baghdad ended a quest for the daughters of Leon Klinghoffer, the American Jew who in 1985 was shot in his wheelchair on the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists and then pushed overboard.

It has been an 18-year journey marked by determination -- not only to bring their father’s killers to justice, but to alert the world to the dangers of terrorism.

Lisa, 51, and her 45-year-old sister, Ilsa, have carried on the work of a foundation established by their mother, who died of colon cancer four months after her husband was slain on orders from Abbas, who masterminded the ship’s hijacking.

They lobbied Congress, handed out humanitarian awards and sponsored a visit from an Israeli terrorism expert, who lectured in schools near the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks. They sued the Palestine Liberation Organization for $1.9 billion. (Abbas headed the Palestine Liberation Front, a PLO splinter group.) The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.

Now, their goal is simple: to see to it that Abbas is tried and sentenced in a U.S. court.

“For us, there is still unfinished business,” Ilsa Klinghoffer said Wednesday. “We can’t celebrate ... until he is put away.”

“For us, it will never be over, anyway,” Lisa added.

Abbas and the ship’s other hijackers were captured when the commercial airliner on which they had negotiated safe passage to Tunisia was intercepted by U.S. jets and forced to land at a military base in Italy.

But he was released when authorities there said they did not have enough evidence to hold him.

Abbas was tried in absentia by an Italian court and convicted in Klinghoffer’s murder. He faces a life sentence there, and had remained a fugitive until captured by U.S. special operations units.

When Klinghoffer’s widow, Marilyn, traveled to Europe to identify members of the team Abbas had recruited, she said nothing -- she just spit in their faces. The sisters said Wednesday that they would like to do the same to Abbas.

During a news conference in Algiers in 1988, Abbas dismissed Klinghoffer’s killing with the phrase: “Maybe he was trying to swim for it.”

Years later, he apologized for the death of the 69-year-old appliance manufacturer: “The killing of the passenger was a mistake.... We are sorry.”

Letty Simon, a Klinghoffer family friend, said that when Italian authorities released Abbas, the sisters’ despair was “extraordinary.”

“They were dealing with the shock of Leon’s murder. It was more than anybody anywhere has any right to bear,” Simon said. “This was a horrible attack visited on a man who was an invalid ... who was innocent, unarmed, disabled, elderly, who could harm nobody. He was murdered because he was an American and a Jew.”

Since their father’s death, Simon said, the sisters have worked vigilantly to see Abbas brought to justice.

“They have been in touch over the years with Congress, the Justice Department, the Italian government. Their foundation, the Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer Memorial Foundation, is part of the Anti-Defamation League. They have continued working both on the issue of terrorism and on the issue of Mr. Abbas,” Simon said.

On Wednesday, both sisters stressed how determined they were after their mother’s death to carry on her crusade.

“My sister and I wanted to ... continue what she began,” Ilsa Klinghoffer said. “She was determined to do everything in her power not only to bring these terrorists to justice, but to address the broader picture of terrorism and how it affects our world.”

As soon as Lisa, an artist, heard that Abbas had been captured, she tried to reach her sister, who was on her way home from work at a New York hospital, where she is assistant director of continuing education.

It turned out that Ilsa already had called home and had spoken to her 14-year-old son, who was busy fielding calls from the media.

“He said to me, ‘Mom, have you heard?’ At that point he informed me they’d captured Abbas.”

Her reaction? “Stunned,” Ilsa Klinghoffer said.

“When something like this touches your life, you are never the same,” she added. “Our lives changed in such unbelievable ways from that moment when we heard 18 years ago. I know things that were important to me before were not. Petty things that used to bother me don’t. Everything changes.

“I think we both feel that we have kind of a mission,” she said.

On Wednesday night, the Klinghoffers, their husbands and their children gathered for a Seder. “We wish our parents could be there with us,” Ilsa said.