In what amounted to hijacking the hijackers, U.S. warplanes intercepted an Egyptian plane Thursday night and forced it to deliver four Palestinian pirates to Italy, the White House said.
Spokesman Larry Speakes said the hijackers were turned over to Italian authorities at a Sicilian military base ”for appropriate legal proceedings.” He said the action was done ”without firing a shot.” President Reagan had authorized it at midday while he was in Chicago.
The Palestinians had surrendered to Egyptian authorities Wednesday, two days after they seized the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro with more than 500 passengers and crewmen aboard. On Tuesday they killed a wheelchair-bound tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, 69, of New York City.
Thursday night, as an Egyptian commercial airliner was taking the four to Tunis, U.S. F-14 jets intercepted it and forced it to land at the joint U.S.-Italian Sigonella military base near Catania, Sicily. It touched down shortly after midnight and was surrounded by U.S. Navy Seal commandos, reports from Italy said.
The U.S. jets came from the carrier Saratoga in the Mediterranean.
Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi had demanded extradition of the hijackers from Egypt to stand trial for seizing the Italian ship and for killing Klinghoffer.
Italian news agencies quoted a statement from Craxi`s office saying he had received a call from President Reagan asking that the Egyptian jet be allowed to land. Craxi`s office said the permission was granted and the plane landed shortly after midnight.
The Italian agencies said Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti`s office had been in contact with Washington and Cairo several times Thursday night.
The government of Tunisia, where the Palestine Liberation Organization is based, reportedly refused permission for the Egyptian jet to land there.
Earlier Thursday, the hijackers` location was a mystery. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said they had left Egypt and were the PLO`s responsibility, but U.S. officials said they had not left. The PLO in Tunis said it did not know where they were.
Mubarak`s government had promised the hijackers safe passage out of the country when they gave up Wednesday, but that was before Klinghoffer`s murder was known. That deal came under fire Thursday from Israel and the United States.
Reagan, on a visit to Chicago Thursday morning, said the murder of Klinghoffer deserves the death penalty, and he would not object if the PLO carried out the sentence. Later he backtracked, saying he would like the PLO to turn the captors over to authorities in the United States, Egypt or Italy for trial.
PLO leader Yasser Arafat condemned the hijacking Wednesday and said that if the hijackers were PLO members they would be punished.
Reagan also revealed that the United States had been poised to launch a military attack to free hostages aboard the Achille Lauro but decided not to proceed after the crisis was resolved peacefully.
”In this last situation, we had moved, we were ready and prepared,”
Reagan told a student questioner at Gordon Technical High School.
The New York Times, quoting an unidentified government official, said an assault force had been assembled in the Mediterranean to seize and liberate the Achille Lauro. Such an action might have been taken Wednesday night, but the hijackers surrendered Wednesday afternoon.
When he arrived at O`Hare International Airport, Reagan at first indicated that he was willing to take Arafat at his word that he would bring the hijackers to justice.
”If he (Arafat) believes their organization has enough of a national set-up, like a nation, (where) they can bring them to justice, then, all right,” Reagan said. ”But just so they are brought to justice.”
Later Reagan tried to modify his statement, saying he wanted the PLO to turn the hijackers over to authorities in the region.
”I did not mean to imply that I favored them to bring the hijackers to justice,” Reagan said. ”I really believe that the PLO, if the hijackers are in their custody, should turn them over to a sovereign state.”
Shortly afterwards, national security adviser Robert McFarlane also tried to clarify the President`s remarks and avoid a diplomatic dispute with Israel. McFarlane stressed that Reagan did not mean to imply U.S. recognition of the PLO and said the President intended to say ”that he wants the PLO to turn these hijackers over to competent authority for trial.”
Earlier Thursday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry announced that it had proof that Arafat and the PLO were behind the hijacking.
David Kimche, the ministry`s director-general, said in Jerusalem that the Israelis have ”irrefutable” proof that Arafat knew in advance that the hijackers would be aboard the Achille Lauro and originally planned to carry out terrorist activity in the Israeli port of Ashdod, its next destination after it left Egypt.
Kimche said they abandoned the plan and instead hijacked the liner after their behavior aroused the suspicions of several passengers.
”We have absolute, complete and irrefutable proof that Arafat knew about this operation before it was going to begin,” Kimche said. ”We cannot, unfortunately, supply that irrefutable proof because we cannot reveal sources. But I can tell you–and you can accept it or not, as you wish–that this
(proof) is in our hands.”
At the same time, Prime Minister Shimon Peres warned that Israel would not forgive the murder of Klinghoffer, a Jew, and indicated that Israel reserved the right to avenge his death.
”The Jewish people . . . have a state, and that state has the means to protect the lives of innocent people,” Peres said.
Charging that Klinghoffer`s murder was motivated by racism, Peres said:
”I am shocked by what happened on this ship, where they separated the Jews from the non-Jews. . . . They killed a man in a wheelchair who had had two heart attacks and threw him into the sea because his name–Klinghoffer
–sounded Jewish.
”We will not forget this nor stand idly by,” he said.
”We cannot understand the Egyptian position,” said Acting Foreign Minister Moshe Arens. ”Especially after the brutal murder of an elderly Jewish man in a wheelchair, who was apparently afterward thrown into the sea, it is difficult for us in Israel to understand how anyone could have reached agreement to allow the terrorists to go free.”
Mubarak said he turned over the four hijackers to the PLO after they surrendered Wednesday on the basis of a report by the ship`s captain that no one aboard had been harmed. Mubarak said he learned of Klinghoffer`s murder only after the hijackers had been released.
The hijackers claimed to belong the Palestine Liberation Front, a PLO member-organization that is split into three factions, one of which is loyal to Arafat. Arafat has denied any connection between the PLO and the pirates, but PLO officials negotiated the release of the hostages.
The hijackers originally claimed to be from a pro-Syrian faction of the PLF. In the end, however, they pledged their loyalty to Arafat and to Mohammed Abbas, leader of the pro-Arafat PLF faction who had been sent to negotiate with them.
Italian diplomats said Abbas had first told them that the four were dissidents and out of the PLO`s control, but he later urged the diplomats to accede to the hijackers` demands for release of 11 Palestinian terrorists held in Italy.
At a press conference in Tunis Thursday, Arafat refused to comment on Abbas` mission or on reports from Beirut that the four hijackers belonged to Abbas` group.
In Washington, Secretary of State George Shultz implicitly criticized Egypt for promising the four safe passage, even though the deal may have been made before the murder was known for certain. Shultz said the pirates had committed a crime by taking the ship and holding the people captive, whether or not somebody was killed. ”They are terrorists and they should be punished,” he said.
”In this case, they murdered an elderly crippled gentleman in a pathetic commentary on the people who do these things.”
Mubarak has warm relations with Arafat and has tried to push him toward peace negotiations with Israel. The anti-Arafat factions of the PLO are also hostile to Mubarak, the head of the only Arab country to make peace with Israel. And some Middle East experts in Washington see the incident–if it was planned, as believed, by a more radical PLO splinter group hostile to Arafat
–as part of an effort to create new frictions between Egypt and Israel as well as to put Arafat on the spot.
