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- <text id=89TT1398>
- <title>
- May 29, 1989: World Notes:West Germany
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- May 29, 1989 China In Turmoil
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 63
- World Notes
- WEST GERMANY
- Justice for Flight 847
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Four years ago, the world watched anxiously as TWA Flight
- 847 sat on a runway in Beirut airport and 39 American passengers
- were held hostage for 17 days by gunslinging hijackers. Among
- the most horrifying images in the intense TV coverage: the body
- of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, 23, being dumped onto the
- tarmac. Last week, after a ten-month trial, a Frankfurt court
- sentenced Lebanese-born Mohammed Ali Hammadi, 24, to life in
- prison for his role in the hijacking and Stethem's murder.
- Unable to determine whether Stethem was shot by Hammadi or a
- second hijacker, still at large, the court ruled that Hammadi
- was accountable as an accomplice.
- </p>
- <p> Hammadi, who is linked to the radical pro-Iranian group
- Hizballah, was arrested in January 1987 while trying to smuggle
- explosives through Frankfurt airport. West Germany denied a
- U.S. extradition request after Hammadi backers kidnaped two
- German businessmen in Lebanon, prompting criticism that Bonn was
- knuckling under to blackmail. Hammadi could have faced the death
- penalty in the U.S., not an option in Germany. Said Stethem's
- father Richard: Hammadi "deserves punishment more severe than
- allowable under German law."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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