Bettino Craxi

After protracted negotiations, the hijackers were given safe passage to Egypt by plane. Three United States Navy F-14's forced the plane down to the United States Naval Air Facility (NAF) of Sigonella. According the version of political circles in Washington, Craxi first gave the United States Forces permission to detain the terrorists, but he later reneged on the deal. He ordered Italian troops to surround the US Forces protecting the plane. This move was supposedly dictated both by security concerns about terrorists targeting Italy if the United States had had it their way, and by the Italian tradition of diplomacy with the Arab world. Craxi's decisive character may have been relevant in this resolution. Though the Americans demanded that the Italian authorities extradite Abu Abbas of the PLO, Craxi stood firm on the grounds that the crime had been perpetrated on Italian territory, on which the Italian Republic had sole jurisdiction. Craxi rejected the US extradition order and let Abu Abbas – chief of the hijackers, present on the plane – flee to Yugoslavia; the four hijackers were later found guilty, and sentenced to prison terms (in USA supposed to be relatively light, above all for the juvenile offender present between them) for hijacking and murder of a Jewish American citizen, Leon Klinghoffer. Also Abbas was later convicted in Italy in absentia, and eventually died, officially from natural cause, shortly after being taken prisoner by American forces in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Read Less