Hijacker's release angers U.S., slain man's family

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A hijacker in a terrorist drama that riveted the United States — the 1985 seizure of a TWA jet in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed — has returned home to Lebanon, paroled by Germany after nearly 19 years in prison.

The United States said Tuesday it wants Lebanon to turn over Mohammed Ali Hamadi for trial in the killing of the diver, Robert Dean Stethem.

Trans World Airlines Flight 847, with 145 passengers and nine crew members, was flying from Athens, Greece, to Rome on June 14, 1985, when it was hijacked by Shiite Muslim militants demanding the release of hundreds of Lebanese from Israeli jails.

During a 17-day ordeal, the plane was forced to crisscross the Mediterranean from Lebanon to Algeria, landing in Beirut three times before it was finally allowed to remain there.

The ordeal produced one of the most enduring images of terrorism: a picture of TWA pilot John Testrake leaning out of the cockpit window as a hijacker clamped a hand over his mouth and waved a pistol.

On the second day of the seizure, the hijackers beat and shot to death Stethem, 23, of Waldorf, Md., and dumped his body onto the runway in Beirut. Witnesses later identified Hamadi as having beaten the tied-up Stethem.

On Tuesday, the prosecutor's office in Frankfurt, Germany, announced Hamadi's release, saying he had been freed and left the country several days earlier after his case came up for a legally mandated review by a parole court.

Hamadi arrived Saturday in his homeland, Lebanon. The United States had sought Hamadi's extradition when he was caught in January 1987 as he went through customs at Frankfurt Airport with liquid explosives in his luggage. The Germans, who have no death penalty, insisted on prosecuting him. In May 1989, a German court convicted him of the hijacking and of Stethem's death. Hamadi was sentenced to life in prison.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States was disappointed with Germany's decision to release Hamadi before he served his full sentence. Stethem's brother called the release "absolutely disturbing" and blamed the U.S. government for not doing enough to prevent Hamadi from being released. "Rob gave his life. He gave his full measure, and I haven't seen anybody give as much to securing his killer as he did ... defending his country," Kenneth Stethem said.

Still at large are Hamadi's three accomplices — Hassan Izz-Al-Din, Ali Atwa and Imad Mughniyeh, the former Hezbollah security chief who is also accused in the kidnappings of Americans in Beirut — who each were indicted in the United States and have a $5 million U.S. bounty on their heads.

Stethem was the only passenger aboard Flight 847 to die, although others were beaten. The other passengers were freed in stages, either in Beirut or Algiers.

The siege ended after Israel released 31 Lebanese prisoners, although Israel and the United States insisted it was not linked to the hijacking.

The hijackers collected passports, trying to determine which passengers were Jewish. Flight attendant Uli Derickson, who acted as a translator for the hijackers, reportedly hid the passports of some passengers with Jewish names and stepped in when hijackers began beating a second U.S. sailor. The hijacking was a standoff in a tumultuous period for Lebanon, which was torn by a civil war that saw the Israeli and Syrian militaries and Shiite, Christian and Palestinian militias battling on its soil.

Militants had repeatedly targeted the United States. Suicide bombers hit U.S. Embassy buildings and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and 1984, killing 328 people, and militants kidnapped several Americans in Lebanon.