Posted on 12/20/2005 2:46:30 AM PST by HAL9000
BEIRUT, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Germany has secretly released a Hizbollah member jailed for life for killing a U.S. Navy diver and returned him to Lebanon despite an extradition request from the United States, Lebanese political sources said on Tuesday.They said Mohammad Ali Hammadi, convicted of killing Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem during the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight to Beirut and sentenced to life without parole, was flown back to Beirut last week.
I guess this had nothing to do with the release of the German hostage. /s
Nice start for Frau Merkel...
Diplomatic sources in Germany confirmed Hammadi's release.Hammadi was captured in 1987 and all attempts to have him exchanged with German hostages held in Lebanon in the late 1980s and early 1990s failed. Hammadi's brother, Abdul-Hadi, was a senior security official of Hizbollah at the time.
News of his release could anger Washington as it had indicted him for Stethem's murder and had asked Berlin to extradite him to the United States if ever he was to be freed.
Hammadi's release occurred a few days before German hostage Susanne Osthoff was freed in Iraq. The archaeologist had disappeared on Nov. 25. Germany said on Sunday she was in safe custody. She has made no public statement since.
The three Black September terrorists that were released-after serving nominal prison sentences-after the Munich massacre.
Hezbollah has perfected this to a science.
They take someone hostage, e.g. Elchanan Tannenbaum, and then exchange them for an incarcerated terrorist from its ranks.
This is outrageous. The murder of that young sailor was particularly brutal. Let's rev up a rendition team. There must be some room at GITMO.
I guess we could hope that the Germans surreptitiously implanted a GPS tracking device in Hammadi so we can track his movements and, if necessary, terminate him with extreme prejudice. But the likelihood of that has got to be miniscule...
She has really got off to a good start - giving in to terrorists and giving away a few billions more in the EU budget (+ looking at an increased VAT to get Germany's econom going again!!)
One shakes one's head.
:(
A quid pro quo you think? I wondered what the Germans did to get their hostage released. So much fo a new, friendlier relationship with the US by the Merkel govt. Even if there wasn't a trade this is appeasement.
This seems to have been Germany's foreign policy for at least the last 40 years.
Someday the chickens are going to come home to roost and it won't be pretty.
If I remember correctly the sailor was brutally beaten for hours before his body was dumped on the tarmac. This obvious exchange is an outrage.
Do Germans have any take-home pay at all after taxes? I'd be surprised...
Par for the course.
More pronounced in dovish, SPD governments-remember Ostpolitik-but even conservative governments aren't immune to this disease.
During the 1970s the Germans made a pact with Palestinian terror gangs that they wouldn't crack down on them, so long as they didn't perpetrate their crimes on German soil.
Forget for a moment that the Bader-Meinhof Gang-the white, Marxist comrades of the PLO-served as a proxy.
The point is that Germany placates terror-as have so many other countries, including this one-at its own peril.
You look the other way when a Fatah skyjacker decides to make use of your misguided hospitality, and the next thing you know Turkish Islamists are hatching a scheme to blow up Attaturk's mausoleum, and the Hamburg cell is planning the destruction of the WTC from across the Atlantic.
There must be some room at GITMO.
>>>
There's plenty of room in the Mediterranian.
This really pi$$es me off.
But those Germans are doing such a great job negotiating with Iran on nuclear weapons proliferation, we can overlook this.
I remember crying for several days after the incident, all of the passengers stated he was very brave,courageous and did not give in to these bastards
Rest in peace, hero.
May your killers get their deserved punishment.
This is of course sick. I would have dumped him into the mediterranian. Anyway there would have been no chance of a extradition to the United States since there he would have been threatened by capital punishment there which is strictly forbidden in Europe. Germany and other European countries do not extradite to countries where the offender could end on a scaffold.
Hammadi was probably about more than 15 years behind bars. This is the usual timespan were killers are released in Germany. I doubt that it has anything to do with the recent release of this woman in Iraq since Hammadi was -to my knowlege- a shiite. The hostage was a German woman that was hijacked by some sunni criminal idiots who wanted to press out money. Merkel probably paid. But this is another party.
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