U.S. Victims See TWA Hijacking Suspect

Several Americans who were aboard the TWA jetliner hijacked to Beirut two years ago reportedly confronted one of the suspected hijackers Monday in a West German prison.

U.S. and West German officials said very little about the incident, but according to West German press accounts, the Americans were taken to Wiesbaden to confront the suspect, Mohammed Ali Hamadi, in an effort to identify him positively as one of the hijackers.

The Americans were not named, and it was not known whether they were passengers or members of the crew. Accounts in the press said that both were in the group.

The West German news agency said that Hamadi, a 22-year-old Lebanese, was taken under tight security from his jail cell in Frankfurt to nearby Wiesbaden, where the Americans were waiting.

But judicial sources said the American witnesses flew by helicopter to the Preungesheim jail near Frankfurt to identify him there and stayed only 14 minutes.

West German authorities would provide no details of the meeting, not even the number of Americans who were on hand.

Hamadi has been in custody here since Jan. 13, when he was arrested at the Frankfurt airport. Authorities said he was trying to smuggle liquid explosives in wine bottles into West Germany.

He was identified through photographs as one of the men who hijacked TWA Flight 847 on June 14, 1985, forced the pilot to fly between Beirut and Algiers a number of times and land finally in Beirut. Some of the passengers were held for 16 days before their release, and one of them, U.S. Navy petty officer Robert Dean Stethem, was killed by the hijackers.

Asked for Extradition

The U.S. government has asked West Germany to extradite Hamadi so that he may be tried on charges of murder and hijacking. The Bonn government has been slow to respond, at least partly because the West Germans have been trying to negotiate the release of two West Germans who were taken hostage in Lebanon after Hamadi’s arrest.

The Hamadi case was discussed by President Reagan and Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany last week in Venice, where both were attending the economic summit conference. Reagan reportedly asked Kohl to make no trade for Hamadi, and Kohl reportedly assured the President that Hamadi would either be tried here or extradited to the United States.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that U.S. officials, with the help of TWA executives, had planned a commando assault to free the passengers and crew of the hijacked jet.

The operation was scrapped because the American commando team could not catch up with the hijacked jet as it crisscrossed the Mediterranean, the newspaper said. The plan called for the second TWA jet to land near the hostage flight so the commandos could storm the plane, the paper said.

The pro-Iranian Shia Muslim group Hezbollah, or Party of God, has been blamed by the United States for the hijacking.