Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a convicted terrorist with American blood on his hands and long wanted by the U.S., sat for years in a German prison. Four days ago, Germany quietly set him free.
German authorities have paroled Mohammed Ali Hamadi after he served 19 years of a life sentence for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner and the killing of a US Navy diver.
Hamadi has been released from prison and has left Germany, said Doris Moeller-Scheu, a spokeswoman for the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office. She said she did not know his destination.
She said Hamadi’s case came up for a regular legally mandated review by a parole court and he was released after an expert assessment and a hearing.
TWA flight 847 from Athens to Rome was hijacked to Beirut, where the hijackers shot US Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, 23, of Waldorf, Maryland, and dumped his body on the tarmac.
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A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Martin Jaeger, said there was no connection between his release and that of Susanne Osthoff, a German woman released at the weekend after spending more than three weeks as a hostage in Iraq.
Hmmm … tit for tat?
Stethem, 23, was beaten and shot on June 15, 1985, while the plane was in Beirut. He was the only casualty during the hijacking ordeal, in which 39 Americans were held hostage for 17 days. He received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart decorations, and a US Navy guided missile destroyer is named in his honour.
Hamadi was arrested at Frankfurt Airport on January 13, 1987, when customs officials discovered liquid explosives in his luggage.
Germany insisted on trying Hamadi, refusing to hand him over to the U.S. in opposition to the American death penalty.
Well, ain’t that great. We don’t want to be overly harsh to killers and terrorists. Meanwhile, Hamadi has already returned to Lebanon and is in contact with the terrorists of Hezbollah.