Achille Lauro hijacker dies in Iraq

Abul Abbas, the head of a Palestinian splinter group who masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the Italian passenger ship the Achille Lauro in which an American tourist was killed, has died in US custody in Iraq, Palestinian officials said tonight.

The Achille Lauro, was commandeered by Abbas’s small Palestine Liberation Front. Palestinian militants threw an elderly wheelchair-bound Jewish American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, overboard.