West German Businessman Seized in Beirut

The West German Foreign Ministry said Sunday that a Hamburg businessman has been kidnaped in Beirut.

West German newspapers speculated that the kidnaping may have been in retaliation for the arrest Tuesday in Frankfurt of a Lebanese suspected of complicity in the hijacking of a TWA airliner in June, 1985.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that an anonymous caller telephoned the West German Embassy in Beirut to say that Rudolf Cordes and three Lebanese accompanying him were kidnaped Saturday night. The three Lebanese were later released, the caller said. The caller did not identify himself or make demands, the ministry said.

Middle East Manager

A spokesman for the giant Hoechst chemical company in Frankfurt said the 53-year-old Cordes is the Middle East manager for the firm. They said he was on a business trip to Beirut.

Reuters news agency reported that a receptionist at the Cavalier Hotel in West Beirut said that Cordes had a reservation but failed to show up.

“The German Embassy in Beirut and the Hoechst company contacted us to know if he had arrived,” the hotel employee was quoted as saying.

Cordes was described as blonde and blue-eyed. He is based in Hamburg but travels frequently to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

“He spends five days in (mostly Muslim) West Beirut and two others in (Christian) East Beirut, and he usually arrives by road from Damascus,” according to the receptionist.

The Hamburg newspaper Bild said that Cordes was abducted soon after arriving in Beirut and that a witness saw him being seized near the hotel.

Cordes is believed to be the 17th Westerner seized by extremists in Lebanon.

German Citizens Warned

Minstry sources said that the West German Embassy last week warned West Germans living in Beirut or traveling there to take special precautions after the arrest Tuesday of Mohammed Ali Hamadi, 22, who was seized by police after debarking from a plane with explosive methyl nitrate disguised as wine in his baggage.

About 200 West Germans live in Lebanon, most of them married to Lebanese citizens.

U.S. authorities accuse Hamadi of being one of the hijackers--all believed to have been Shia Muslim extremists--who seized TWA Flight 847 on a flight from Athens to Rome in June, 1985. The flight’s passengers and crew were subjected to an ordeal that didn’t end for the last 39 of them until leaders of Beirut’s Shia militia Amal arranged to have them released and taken to Damascus, Syria, many days later.

Navy Diver Slain

In the early phase of the hijacking, a passenger, U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, 23, was beaten and shot to death and his body was thrown onto the tarmac at Beirut International Airport.

West German press sources speculated in today’s editions that the Hoechst executive may have been kidnaped as a device to try to gain the release of Hamadi from West German custody.

The United States is asking for Hamadi’s extradition to stand trial for murder and conspiracy to commit air piracy. Justice Ministry officials predicted that he will be quickly extradited to the United States, now that the Justice Department in Washington has agreed not to seek the death penalty against him.

Under the 1978 extradition treaty between the United States and West Germany, Bonn cannot hand over suspects who face capital punishment because West Germany has abolished the death penalty.