“We surrounded the plane, and then the Italians surrounded us.”
(New York Times, October 19, 1985)
The Achille Lauro Hijacking
On October 7, 1985 the Italian MS Achille Lauro cruise ship was hijacked by four heavily armed men of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) off the coast of Egypt, as she was sailing from Alexandria to Ashdod, Israel. Some 80 passengers and 320 crewmembers were taken hostage, most of them Italians. There was only one casualty: the death of an elderly wheelchair-bound Jewish-American man named Leon Klinghoffer, an American citizen.
While negotations were being made with the PLF, the Italian Special Forces were planning to intervene and board the ship. The mission was to be led by 60 Italian special force troops from the 9th Paratroopers Assault Regiment “Col Moschin”, following a plan devised with COMSUBIN—Italy's elite commando frogman force.
During the preparations, the U.S. ambassador to Italy informed Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi that the United States also intended to mount a military assault on the vessel. Craxi protested, saying that it was an Italian ship and therefore only Italy should act. At this point Klinghoffer's death had not yet been confirmed, nor was his identity yet known.
While the Italian and Egyptian governments were leading successful negotiations with the PLF, President Ronald Raegan proceeded to implement a plan for military intervention, despite Craxi's protests. These plans proved unnecessary, however, and were not carried out, as on October 9 at 5:00 p.m. the four hijackers released the hostages, abandoned the ship and surrendered themselves to the Egyptian authorities in exchange for safe passage.
The ship's captain, Capt. Gerardo De Rosa, confirmed in a call with Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti that he had regained control of the ship, and also informed the Minister of Klinghoffer's death.
The next day, October 10, the four hijackers together with several Egyptian representatives boarded an EgyptAir Boeing 737 airliner. Also on board was Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) who had condemned the hijacking and helped the Egyptians negotiate the release of the hostages. The jet took off from Cairo at 4:15 p.m. EST and headed for Tunisia.
Jurisdiction Dispute Between Italy and the United States
Italy maintained that the ship, being Italian, was legally Italian territory and therefore the hijackers should be extradited to Italy. However, the United States insisted that the death of an American citizen justified their extradition to the United States.
The Reagan administration ordered the EgyptAir jet to be intercepted and forced to land so that the hijackers could be taken into U.S. custody.
On the night of October 10, on the orders of President Reagan and his Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, four F-14 fighters intercepted the aircraft and forced it to land in Sicily, at the Sigonella air base—a base which was shared by the United States Navy and Italian Air Force, but where the United States had no jurisdiction.
When Italian Colonel Ercolano Annichiarico learned of the American action, at about 10:30 p.m., he denied the American request to land at Sigonella. They landed anyway.
Not only had the Americans not received consent from the Italians to forcibly land a non-hostile plane flying in compliance with international law at Sigonella, but the American military action was taken solely for American purposes—not those of the NATO alliance—and was taken in order to secure criminals. This was in violation of the purely joint military purposes that the Italians had agreed to when deciding to share the utilization of the base.
Minutes after landing, American forces declared that the EgyptAir jet was now in the custody of U.S. military. The Italian Prime Minister, Bettino Craxi, was strongly opposed to American intervention. The Egyptian government also protested the American interception of its plane, which was a lawful flight under international law, and therefore, according to international law, the American interception of the plane constituted an illegal hijacking and act of terrorism.
Standoff Between the Italians and Americans
American troops of the Delta Force, led by General Carl Stiner, and SEAL Team SIX, under commanding officer Robert A. Gormly, had encircled the Egyptian airplane, but soon found themselves surrounded by Italian military security from the Italian Air Force and Carabinieri—the Italian military police. They insisted that Italy had territorial rights over the base and jurisdiction over the hijackers. The standoff between the United States and Italian armed forces began.
20 Carabinieri and 30 troops of the VAM—an elite branch of the Italian Air Force—contested for control of the plane with 80 armed operatives of the U.S. Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. The Italian forces were soon reinforced by 300 additional armed Carabinieri who had also blocked off the runway with their trucks. The Italian military refused to allow the SEALs to board the plane, threatening to open fire on the Americans if they made any attempt to do so.
Stiner and Gormly contacted the Pentagon to inform them of the situation, and this information was passed onto the Reagan Administration. Members of the President's staff told the Italian government that the U.S. special forces team intended to arrest the hijackers. The Italians dismissed the Americans' claim of a right to do so, maintaining that the matter fell within Italian jurisdiction due to the ship sailing under an Italian flag.
A phone call took place between President Reagan and Prime Minister Bettino Craxi. Reagan informed Craxi that the U.S. would seek extradition of the terrorists to face charges in U.S. courts. Craxi refused to back down and reasserted Italian territorial rights over the Sigonella air base.
Italian President Francesco Cossiga ordered Italian troops to use lethal force if necessary to block the Americans if they tried to leave with the prisoners. The American forces were outnumbered 350 to 80, although Gen. Stiner boastfully asserted that his men had enough firepower to defeat the Italian forces. However, the American leadership in Washington concluded that Stiner's men would never be able to successfully make it out of Italy with the hijackers.
The stand-off lasted throughout the night. After five hours of negotiations between the Italian and American governments, the U.S. yielded and conceded the Italian claim of jurisdiction. At 4:00 a.m. CET the next day, Stiner and his men were ordered to stand down.
After continued talks between Italy and Egypt the four hijackers were arrested by the Italian Carabinieri at Sigonella, and taken to the air base jail, then transferred to a local prison. They would eventually be tried and convicted in July of the following year.
In the meantime, the EgyptAir jet—carrying the Egyptian representatives and Abu Abbas—was cleared by the Italians to fly to Rome.
Jet Fighter Showdown Between the Italians and Americans
When Gen. Stiner learned that the Egyptian jet had been cleared by the Italians, he took it upon himself to board a T-39 Navy executive jet with American Special Operations personnel and planned to shadow the jet to make sure it landed in Rome rather than return to Cairo. When the Egyptian airliner took off from Sigonella at 10:00 p.m. the American T-39 was not granted clearance from that runway. In response, the Americans illegally used a nearby runway without receiving Italian permission to do so.
In response to this unauthorized act by Stiner and the Americans, the Italians sent in two Aeritalia F-104S Starfighter warplanes of the 36th Stormo from Gioia del Colle. These were soon joined by two more Italian F-104s from the Grazzanise air base.
In response to the Italian action, other American warplanes came up behind the Italian jets. The Italian jets also found that their radar had been sabotaged above the Tyrrhenian Sea by a U.S. Northrop Grumman EA-6B Prowler.
The pilots aboard the Italian and U.S. jets proceeded to exchange insults over the radio in a high-tension atmosphere bordering upon war.
Once the Egyptian aircraft approached Rome, all of the American jets turned back except the T-39 with Gen. Stiner, which continued to tail the plane. The Italian air-traffic controllers in Rome denied the T-39 permission to land, but the U.S. pilot falsely claimed there was an “in-flight emergency” which gave him an automatic right to land the jet, further infuriating the Italian authorities.
The Abu Abbas Question
The question of what should happen to Abu Abbas led to further disputes. Israeli intelligence asserted that Abu Abbas was the mastermind of the hijacking and not an innocent party. The Mossad—Israel's secret intelligence agency—and the United States secretly collaborated together to compile evidence for a case against Abbas, to pressure Italy into handing him over to the Americans.
The U.S. District Court in Washington, DC then issued warrants for Abbas and the hijackers, which were delivered to the Italian Ministry of Justice by the U.S. Ambassador to Italy on October 12 at 5:30 a.m.
Italy's Ministry of Justice determined that the United States' claims had no legal basis, and Prime Minister Craxi announced that Italy would not be complying with U.S. requests for extradition. The Reagan administration was shocked by Italy's decision. The U.S. Ambassador to Italy interrupted a meeting between Craxi and his cabinet with a personal plea from Reagan.
After consideration, Craxi and his cabinet voted to permit Abbas to depart from Italy and refused to hand him over to the Americans on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to link Abbas to the hijacking.
Abraham Sofaer, a U.S. State Department legal adviser, publicly condemned Italy's decision.
Aftermath
The standoff at Sigonella and subsequent jet fighter showdown—collectively known as the Sigonella Crisis—was the most serious post-war diplomatic crisis between Italy and the United States. It marked the height of tensions between the Italian and American governments during the Cold War period and nearly led to the first open war between Italy and the United States since the end of World War II.
The United States' intervention and subsequent diplomatic pressures were widely regarded in Italy as acts of American arrogance, and Craxi's refusal to back down was popularly received. Moreover, the American violation of operating in Italian airspace and landing in a Roman airport without overflight or landing permissions was seen by the Italians as an affront to their laws and safety regulations, and it negatively influenced diplomatic relations between the two countries for some time.
The episode is still remembered with pride by Italians today, who view Craxi's handling of the Sigonella Crisis and the Abu Abbas Question as a defense of Italian rights and sovereignty, an exertion of independent foreign policy, and as a bold act of resistance and defiance against American pressures and bullying.
