Leon Klinghoffer - Legacy

Legacy

After his death, their daughters established the Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer Memorial Foundation with the Anti-Defamation League. The foundation combats terrorism through educational, political and legal means. The foundation is funded by an undisclosed settlement paid by the PLO to the Klinghoffers to settle a lawsuit seeking damages for the PLO's role in the hijacking (Klinghoffer v. PLO, 739 F. Supp. 854 (S.D.N.Y. 1990) and Klinghoffer v. PLO, 937 F.2d 44, 50 (2d Cir. 1991)). This lawsuit spurred passage of the Antiterrorism Act of 1990 which made it easier for victims of terrorism to sue terrorists and collect civil damages for losses incurred.

The hijacking was made into a television movie in 1990, Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair starring Burt Lancaster and Eva Marie Saint.

Leon Klinghoffer was also portrayed by Karl Malden in the 1989 television film The Hijacking of the Achille Lauro.

American composer John Adams' second opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, based on the events of 1985 opened to great controversy in 1991. The concept for the opera was suggested by director Peter Sellars and it featured a libretto by Alice Goodman. The Los Angeles Opera shared in the work's commission but never presented it, after the work was attacked by those who objected to its alleged excessive "understanding" of terrorists. A Prix Italia-winning television version of the opera, starring Sanford Sylvan and Christopher Maltman, and directed by Penny Woolcock, was screened by United Kingdom's Channel 4 in 2003.

PLF leader Muhammad Zaidan a.k.a. Abu Abbas was freed by the Italian government in the aftermath of the Achille Lauro affair, but was continually sought by the United States government. He was captured in Iraq in 2003 by U.S. forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The ship involved in the hijacking, the Achille Lauro, returned to cruise duty until she caught fire off the coast of Somalia on November 30, 1994. After evacuating the ship of passengers, the crew could not control the fire and the abandoned ship sank on December 2.

According to an interview with famous comic book artist Jack Kirby some time after the hijacking, he and Leon were close friends, having grown up together in New York's lower east side on Suffolk Street.