US blamed for Achille Lauro mastermind’s death in Iraq

He also accused Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency of helping US forces ‘‘torture’’ Abbas, saying he had sent word to supporters that ‘‘Mossad officers, Jewish officers, participated in the interrogation’’. Shebli said US interrogators had sought information from Abbas that could help find the hijackers of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro. Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old wheelchair-bound American Jew, was killed and thrown into the sea during the hijacking.

Abbas, also known as ‘‘Abu Abbas’’, was not aboard the ship during the operation that embarrassed Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation. He had spent most of the past 17 years in Iraq, eluding capture by the US and Italy.

Italy freed Abbas after US warplanes forced his jet to land in Sicily following the hijacking, although it later sentenced him — after he had already left — to life in jail. —(Reuters)