Curse of the Achille Lauro

<p>Abu al-Abbas was one of Yasser Arafat's top generals. His name is forever linked to an operation in 1985 that sparked an international crisis: the hijacking of an Italian cruise liner named the Achille Lauro and the death of Leon Klinghoffer an elderly American tourist. This memoir by the wife of Abu al-Abbas recalls an era of Palestinian resistance the hard realities of a cause that faced impossible odds and the irony that the death of a single man should outweigh all arguments of right and wrong.</p><p>Abu al-Abbas told his wife . . . that his intention was to carry out an honorable operation against the Israeli Army . . . . I wanted them to reach Ashdod: not to fight the passengers on board [the Achille Lauro].</p><p>[Abu al-Abbas] was to be haunted by the crime for the rest of his life. And when he died mysteriously in US custody in a Baghdad prison camp after America's 2003 invasion all the world remembered of Al-Abbas was a crippled man called Leon Klinghoffer. No-one cared how an apparently healthy man would die in American hands.</p><p>-Robert Fisk The Independent</p>