Jon Mark

Four armed hijackers executed a 69-year-old disabled American in a wheelchair and threw him overboard into the Mediterranean—only for US Navy fighter jets to ambush their getaway airliner in pitch-black airspace, forcing it down onto a NATO runway for an armed standoff between American commandos and Italian carabinieri. ​The reason might surprise you. ​On October 7, 1985, the Italian luxury cruise liner MS Achille Lauro was cruising off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, carrying hundreds of international holidaymakers. ​While the majority of passengers had disembarked for a shore excursion to Cairo, four heavily armed militants from the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), led by 23-year-old Youssef Majed al-Molqi, seized the vessel. ​Their original plan had been to stay undercover until the ship docked in Ashdod, Israel, to launch a suicide raid on military installations. But when a cabin steward caught them cleaning assault rifles in their state room, they panicked, commandeered the bridge, and held over 400 remaining passengers and crew hostage. ​They redirected the cruise liner toward Tartus, Syria, demanding the immediate release of 50 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. ​When the Syrian government refused to allow the ship to enter port, the hijackers decided to execute a hostage to prove their resolve: ​They singled out Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Jewish-American retired appliance manufacturer from New York who had suffered two severe strokes and was confined to a wheelchair. ​Forced onto the open deck, Klinghoffer was shot once in the forehead and once in the chest. ​The hijackers then forced two ship crew members at gunpoint to dump Klinghoffer's body and his wheelchair into the open sea. ​Fearing international retaliation, PLF leader Muhammad Zaidan (known as Abu Abbas) established radio contact with the ship, ordering the hijackers to steer back toward Port Said, Egypt. ​In Cairo, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak arranged a controversial diplomatic compromise: ​In exchange for releasing the cruise ship and the remaining hostages unharmed, the hijackers were granted safe passage out of Egypt aboard a commercial EgyptAir Boeing 737 bound for Tunis, alongside Abu Abbas. ​President Mubarak publicly claimed the hijackers had already left the country, but US intelligence knew the plane had not yet taken off from Al Maza military airbase. ​When President Ronald Reagan learned of Klinghoffer's murder, he issued an immediate directive: intercept the airliner. ​On the night of October 10, four F-14 Tomcat fighter jets from the USS Saratoga (Carrier Air Wing 17), supported by an E-2C Hawkeye radar plane, roared off the catapults into the dark Mediterranean sky: ​Without using radio transmissions or radar illumination, the F-14s crept up on the EgyptAir flight in complete blackout mode at 34,000 feet south of Crete. ​Switching on running lights and drawing within inches of the airliner’s wingtips, the American fighter pilots rocked their wings and radioed the Egyptian pilot directly on emergency frequencies: "Divert your heading to Sigonella, or face interception." ​Flanked on both wings by armed Tomcats, the airliner had no choice but to follow the escorts down to Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily. ​The crisis, however, didn't end on the tarmac. It triggered a near-shooting standoff between two NATO allies: ​As soon as the airliner touched down at midnight, US Navy SEAL Team Six operators surrounded the plane in tactical gear. ​Within minutes, fifty Italian Carabinieri and military police surrounded the Navy SEALs with submachine guns, drawing down on the Americans. ​Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi insisted that because the aircraft had landed on sovereign Italian soil and the hijacking occurred on an Italian-flagged ship, Italy retained absolute legal jurisdiction. (Read more below...)