Page "Naval Air Station Sigonella" Paragraph 15

On the night of 10 October 1985, there were tense hours on NAS II when the Italian Carabinieri, Italian Air Force, and the American Navy SEALs came close to firing upon one another following the interception by Navy F-14 Tomcat fighters of an Egyptian Boeing 737 airliner carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, which had been commandeered by members of the PLO on 7 October.

The hijackers had killed a Jewish-American citizen Leon Klinghoffer.

The F-14s instructed the Egyptian plane to land at Sigonella where the Americans had planned to take the hijackers into custody.

The Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi instead claimed the hijackers were under Italian jurisdiction.

The Italian authorities therefore refused to allow the SEALs to board the plane, threatening to open fire on the Americans had they made an attempt to do so.

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.

The ensuing stand-off lasted throughout the night, until President Ronald Reagan gave the orders for the Americans to stand down.