Italy to expel Palestinian who took part in Achille Lauro cruise hijacking
By The Associated Press Last update - 22:26 07/07/2008
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999822.html

Italian authorities have ordered a Palestinian man expelled after he served
his sentence for taking part in the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro
cruise ship, which resulted in the murder of an American citizen.

The 43-year-old Ibrahim Fatayer Abdelatif was freed Monday from a temporary
holding center for illegal immigrants in Rome, his lawyer said.

Lawyer Francesco Romeo said authorities have ordered Abdelatif to leave
Italy within 15 days. Romeo said a request for political asylum had been
turned down, but he plans to appeal the expulsion order because his client
has nowhere to go.

Abdelatif was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon but is not a citizen of that
country and Beirut will not let him back in, he said.

Abdelatif was given a 25-year sentence for being a member of the four-man
team that took over the Italian cruise ship off the Egyptian coast. During
the hijacking an elderly, wheelchair-bound American from New York, Leon
Klinghoffer, was shot and pushed overboard.

Romeo said his client's sentence was reduced for good behavior. Before
ending up in the holding center in April he spent 20 years in prison and
three on parole working for a Catholic charity in the central Italian city
of Perugia, the lawyer told The Associated Press by telephone.

Others convicted in Italy for the hijacking include Youssef Magied al-Molqi,
who was sentenced to 30 years for shooting Klinghoffer, and Khaled Husain
Abdullrahim, who was given life in prison.

The hijacking was organized by the militant Palestinian Liberation Front in
part to demand the freedom of Samir Kantar, the convicted gunman now at the
center of a prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah.