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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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052989
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05298900.021
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1990-09-22
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WORLD, Page 63World NotesWEST GERMANYJustice for Flight 847
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.
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."