Achille Lauro (ship)
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
The Achille Lauro was a cruise ship with a length of 192 m and a measurement of 23,112 GRT . She was launched on July 1, 1946 for Rotterdamsche Lloyd as Willem Ruys . In January 1965 it was transferred to the Italian Lauro line and renamed. The ship was best known for its hijacking in 1985. It sank in 1994 as a result of a machine fire.
Willem Ruys
In January 1939, construction of the Willem Ruys began and the keel was laid. After the outbreak of World War II, the ship under construction was damaged in air raids. On the orders of the German occupying forces, construction was continued because the ship wanted to be completed for its own purposes. After continuing acts of sabotage by Dutch resistance fighters, the unfinished hull was then further damaged by bombs from the British Air Force, so that the occupiers gave it up. After the end of the war, Rotterdamsche Lloyd decided to continue building the ship despite the considerable damage. On July 1, 1946, the steamer was finally launched and was christened Willem Ruys , named after the founder of the shipping company. The Willem Ruys was completed in November 1947 , and on December 2 of the same year she set out on her maiden voyage from Rotterdam to Indonesia.
On January 6, 1953, the Willem Ruys collided with the Oranje . The Oranje was badly damaged, while the Willem Ruys was only slightly damaged.
After Indonesia's independence in 1949, the number of passengers continued to decline, so that from 1958 the Willem Ruys was used on the route to Canada and later to Australia and New Zealand. After the further decline in the number of passengers, Rotterdamsche Lloyd sold the Willem Ruys to the Italian Lauro Line in 1965.
Achille Lauro
After the takeover, the ship was modernized and numerous modifications were made, which significantly changed the appearance of the ship. It received narrow high chimneys instead of the previous wide and flat, also elongated superstructures and a sleeker bow. The hull, which was previously gray, was painted blue. Renamed Achille Lauro , the ship was initially used in the liner service to Sydney, from 1972 only for cruises.
The abduction
initial situation
On October 7, 1985, the Achille Lauro , which had set out on a twelve-day Mediterranean cruise and was currently sailing from Alexandria to Port Said in northeastern Egypt with 680 passengers and about 350 crew members, mainly Italian and Portuguese, was hit by four Palestinian terrorists kidnapped. These were members of the Palestinian Liberation Front , whose leader was Abu Abbas , and threatened to kill the passengers one by one, starting with the US citizens if the State of Israel did not immediately arrest 50 Palestinians accused of terrorism or " Like-minded "release. Of the latter, Samir Kuntar was the only one named by name. As the only non-Palestinians, the German should neo-Nazi , unofficial Stasi -Staff and PLF officer Odfried Hepp be freely pressed from French prison, which under the nom de guerre Omar Saad Tariq had for years acted for the PLF.
Should anyone try to save the passengers or attack the hostage-takers, they would blow up the ship. The expert groups, which were quickly convened, found it difficult to judge how many passengers were still on board, as some had left the ship in Alexandria and wanted to go back on board after seeing the pyramids in Port Said. Italian authorities estimated the number of hostages on board at 60 to 80, including about a dozen US citizens. The kidnappers ordered the captain to call at the port of Tartus in Syria and at the same time demanded negotiations with the ambassadors of Italy, the USA, Great Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany. In order to emphasize their demands, according to eyewitness reports, they shot the partially paralyzed American tourist of Jewish descent Leon Klinghoffer (69) from close range in the chest and head and then forced the ship's hairdresser and a waiter to throw the body and wheelchair overboard.
Negotiations and arrest of the kidnappers
At the urging of Rome and Washington, which were considering a military liberation operation in international waters, the Syrian authorities refused Achille Lauro entry into the port of Tartus. Also Cyprus , which wanted to start the kidnappers next, refused. The Achille Lauro finally set course for Port Said against the will of the US government, but with the approval of the Italian government Bettino Craxi , where she also moored. After negotiations, the terrorists were guaranteed free retreat to a country of their choice if they did not cause further harm to their hostages. Only then did the death of Klinghoffers become known.
A few months earlier, TWA Flight 847 had been hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and detained in Beirut for two weeks, also killing a US citizen ( Robert Stethem ). The kidnappers were able to flee then - this time the Reagan administration was determined not to let things get that far.
US secret services overheard a conversation by Egyptian President Mubarak in his office, in which the kidnappers were assured safe conduct in a passenger plane to Algiers . The US Navy then intercepted the hijacker's aircraft - an Egyptian Boeing 737 - with four F-14 fighter aircraft that had taken off from the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga and forced it to land at Sigonella Air Force Base in Sicily , where the terrorists were to be arrested . This was followed by a scandal - around 50 elite soldiers from the US Delta Force surrounded the aircraft to arrest the hijackers, while they were surrounded by soldiers of the Italian Air Force and carabinieri with heavy equipment who wanted to enforce their sovereignty. The previous landing of two US transport planes with members of the US special forces on board had not been discussed with the Italian government, so they were initially not given a landing permit. Only after more than five hours did the Americans refrain from arresting the kidnappers and bringing them to the USA, so that the Italians could now arrest the kidnappers.
The presidents of the USA, Italy, Egypt and various other countries were personally involved in the negotiations during the kidnapping of Achille Lauro .
Abu Abbas' escape and condemnation of the kidnappers
Bettino Craxi did not want to risk Italian relations with Egypt and allowed the pilot of the Egyptian Boeing 737 with the PLO representatives and Abu Abbas, who claimed diplomatic immunity, to fly to Rome. Egypt had meanwhile arrested the Achille Lauro and declared that it would release the Italian ship if Italy let the Egyptian plane pull. To safeguard American interests, the US Navy sent a fighter plane to Ciampino Airport , where the US pilot faked an emergency landing. Rome immediately demanded an apology from Washington. Arrest warrants were now being drawn up in the United States and forwarded to Interpol , and preparations were being made to indict the four kidnappers and Abu Abbas, who were to be extradited by Italy, of hostage-taking, piracy and conspiracy in the United States. Craxi saw no way to detain Abu Abbas any longer, even though Reagan and the US ambassador to Italy, who explained Abu Abbas' longstanding involvement in terrorist activities, urgently asked him to do so.
The Italian crew on board the Achille Lauro had meanwhile literally become hostages of the Egyptians, Hosni Mubarak publicly referred to the USA as "international pirates" and Yasser Arafat urged Craxi to let Abu Abbas go, since the PLO would otherwise no longer have any "guarantees" for the fate of the ship and its crew detained in Egypt. The Italian Prime Minister decided to allow Abu Abbas to travel to Belgrade , from where he flew on to Baghdad via Aden . It was reported that Reagan was extremely angry at this and even toyed with the idea of removing the US ambassador from Rome. Tensions grew on both sides and anti-American demonstrations in Italy reached a new high since the Vietnam War. In order to avert the looming government crisis in Italy and to prevent the Communists from coming to power, Ronald Reagan sent a conciliatory letter to Bettino Craxi, which later became known as the "Dear Bettino Letter".
Six other Palestinians were arrested and tried in an Italian court on suspicion of helping the kidnappers with weapons, explosives and forged papers. The charges against one of the kidnappers were dropped, while the other three continued to claim that their “mission” was planned as an attack on the Israeli port of Ashdod , where Achille Lauro was actually going.
Magied al-Molqi, the leader of the hostage-takers who was charged with the murder of Klinghoffer, was sentenced to 30 years in prison. The prosecution had originally demanded life imprisonment for him. He escaped to Spain in February 1996 when he was released for twelve days by the Italian magistrate for “good conduct”. There he was caught again and extradited to Italy.
Ibrahim Abdel Atif received 24 years and Ahmed Al-Hassani 15 years. The latter escaped from prison in 1991. Abu Abbas and two other PLF officials were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia. The six other defendants were partly acquitted and partly sentenced to shorter prison terms.
Reactions and further developments
In the US, the PLO was blamed for its involvement in the death of Leon Klinghoffer. PLO spokesman Faruq al-Qadumi slandered the widow and claimed that she herself murdered Klinghoffer in order to get his life insurance. The charges were dropped when the Palestinian Organization allegedly transferred an undisclosed amount to Klinghoffer's daughters, who formed the basis of the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) Anti-Defamation League (ADL) memorial foundation against terrorism. In 1996, Abu Abbas commented on the death of Leon Klinghoffer “we are sorry” and that the kidnapping had been “a mistake”. Actually, they were on their way to Israel to carry out terrorist attacks there. This coincides with the statements made by representatives of the PLF during the hostage-taking in 1985: The kidnappers were actually on their way to Ashdod in Israel, were accidentally discovered by a crew member because of their weapons and then hijacked the ship in a panic.
A US State Department spokesman dismissed Abu Abbas' apology a little later, saying, “We consider it irrelevant. We still hold him responsible for it "(" We believe it's irrelevant. We still hold him responsible ")
The downfall
On November 30, 1994, a fire broke out in the aft engine room of the Achille Lauro , which was with 572 passengers and 408 crew members on a cruise from Genoa to Durban , in the Indian Ocean , about 40 nautical miles east of the Horn of Africa . Nitrogen introduced into the engine room could not extinguish the fire because the bulkheads (doors) were not closed, the fire got out of control and gradually spread to several decks of the ship. The water brought into the hull by the extinguishing water pumps resulted in the ship listing about ten degrees. Passengers and crew had to be disembarked in lifeboats and were picked up by several ships rushing to the SOS call, most of them by the Panamanian-flagged tanker Hawaiian King , and taken to the port of Mogadishu. The US Navy sent two ships, the USS Halyburton and the USS Gettysburg , to the scene of the accident, primarily to provide food and medical care for the castaways.
In the early morning hours of December 2, 1994, the Dutch deep-sea and salvage tug Solano hooked the ship to bring it close to the coast. That same evening, a powerful explosion rocked the ship's foredeck, which immediately became extremely listed and sank within ten minutes.
Three people were killed in the accident, including a German who died of a heart attack shortly before boarding the lifeboat.
After lengthy investigations into the cause of the accident, only ten years later, in 2004, the captain, the chief officer and the chief engineer, i.e. the three highest ship officers, were sentenced by a court in Naples to prison terms of between two and a half and three and a half years for proven misconduct. After a legal dispute that lasted until 2006, the judgments were upheld by a higher court.
Trivia
The musician Moss Hills , who on August 3, 1991 took on the organization of the rescue of the passengers on board the sinking cruise ship Oceanos , since parts of the crew had previously left the sinking ship early, was now experiencing a little more than three years later once with a ship disaster - he was engaged as an on-board musician on the last voyage of the Achille Lauro .
reception
The subject of the ship hijacking was dealt with in the opera The Death of Klinghoffer by the American composer John Adams , which was filmed in 2001 by Penny Woodcock for Channel Four . In addition, the kidnapping of Achille Lauro was filmed two more times, with Karl Malden and Burt Lancaster playing the role of Leon Klinghoffer.
See also
literature
- Brian M. Jenkins: The Aftermath of the Achille Lauro. Rand, Santa Monica CAL 1985.
- Antonio Cassese : Terrorism, Politics and Law. The Achille Lauro Affair. Polity, Cambridge 1989, ISBN 0-7456-0618-0 .
- Mathias Münchau: Terrorism at sea from an international law perspective. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-631-46696-X .
- Nico Guns, Frans Luidinga: Willem Ruys en de ondergang as Achille Lauro. Van Soeren & Co, Amsterdam 2010, ISBN 978-90-6881-135-3 .
Web links
- Photos and facts about the ship (Swedish)
- Detailed history of the ship, including with pictures of the burning ship
- Color photo of Willem Ruys
Footnotes
- ↑ a b c d Achille Lauro. Archived from the original on April 19, 2012 ; Retrieved October 11, 2011 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j A Hijack on the High Seas - Part One. In: BBC , May 7, 2002
- ↑ Achille Lauro Hijacking. Archived from the original on May 10, 2000 ; accessed on March 11, 2018 .
- ^ Jury Winterberg: The Rebel. Odfried Hepp - neo-Nazi, terrorist, dropout. Gustav Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2004, ISBN 3-7857-2160-9 .
- ↑ To hell with pirates all over the world . In: Der Spiegel . tape 42 , October 14, 1985 ( spiegel.de [accessed August 26, 2018]).
- ↑ So fermammo gli Usa. In: La Repubblica . April 16, 2003 - Description of the "Battle of Sigonella" (Italian).
- ↑ The kidnapping of the "Achille Lauro" - a cruise ship, soldiers ready to fight and a lot of diplomacy . In: Deutschlandfunk . ( deutschlandfunk.de [accessed on August 25, 2018]).
- ^ Eli Polak: Klinghoffer. In: Jerusalem Post. June 25, 2014.
- ↑ US rejects terrorist's apology for Klinghoffer murder. In: CNN. April 24, 1996.