ABSTRACT
On 7 October 1985, four armed men claiming to represent the Palestine Liberation Front took control of the Italian-flag cruise liner Achille Lauro on the high seas about thirty miles off Port Said and held the crew and passengers hostage. They had boarded her in port in Genoa posing as legitimate passengers. They demanded the release of fifty Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and threatened to blow up the ship if intervention were attempted, and to start to kill the passengers if their demands were not met.1 Subsequently a Jewish American passenger, Mr Klinghoffer, was shot dead and his body thrown overboard. Several days later the four men gave themselves up to the Egyptian authorities, following negotiations between them, with the aid of an intermediary, while the ship was lying off Port Said. These negotiations resulted in an offer to the terrorists of a safe conduct to Tunisia in return for their leaving the ship without further violence.
