Hey Dementia Dan,
Can you explain to your audience what massive military retaliation taken by Mr. Reagan when Leon Klinghoffer was thrown over the side of the Achille Lauro (some spellings may be incorrect)?????
How about Robert Stethem?
Hey Touched Tommyjo,
The is a little difference in the assassination of 2,595 people on Sept. 11 and the unfortunate slaying of two innocent people on two different occasions.
On October 7, 1985, four members of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) took control of the liner off Egypt as she was sailing from Alexandria to Port Said. Holding the passengers and crew hostage, they directed the vessel to sail to Tartus, Syria, and demanded the release of 50 Palestinians then in Israeli prisons. After being refused permission to dock at Tartus, the hijackers killed disabled Jewish-American passenger Leon Klinghoffer and then threw his body overboard.[4]
The ship then headed back towards Port Said, and after two days of negotiations, the hijackers agreed to abandon the liner in exchange for safe conduct and were flown towards Tunisia aboard an Egyptian commercial airliner. This plane, however, was intercepted by US fighter aircraft and directed to land in Sicily, where the hijackers were arrested and later tried for murder
On June 14, 1985, Stethem was returning from an assignment in Nea Makri, Greece aboard TWA Flight 847 when it was hijacked by members of the Lebanese pro-Iranian organization Hezbollah. The hijackers held 39 people hostage for 17 days, demanding the release of 766 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.[3]
When their demands were not met, Stethem, as a member of the US military, was targeted, beaten, and tortured. Finally, the hijackers shot him and dumped his body onto the tarmac at the Beirut airport.[3]
One of the hijackers, Mohammed Ali Hammadi, was arrested two years later in Frankfurt, Germany. He was tried and convicted of Stethem's murder and sentenced to life in prison. Three others, Imad Mugniyah, Hassan Izz-Al-Din, and Ali Atwa, were eventually indicted for their involvement in the incident. In 2002, they were added to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list. On February 13, 2008, Imad Mugniyah was killed in an explosion in Damascus, Syria.[4]
Mohammed Ali Hammadi was paroled in December 2005 and returned to Lebanon. It is speculated that he was released in a prisoner swap in exchange for the release of Susanne Osthoff, who was kidnapped in Iraq one month earlier.[3]