One of the hijackers of the Achille Lauro has been freed after serving 20 years in an Italian prison.
The Associated Press reported that 43-year-old Ibrahim Fatayer Abdelatif was ordered to leave Italy within 15 days after serving a sentence for the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship.
Abdelatif was a member of a four-man team representing the Palestine Liberation Front that overtook the Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt on October 7, 1985. During the incident, another hijacker shot and killed Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound passenger from New York, and threw him overboard.
According to the AP, Abdelatif applied for political asylum to stay in Italy, claiming he has no place to go. He was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon, but he is not a Lebanese citizen, and the country will not let him in.