Bonn Vows Early Trial for Hamadi in Hijack Slaying

The West German Cabinet today formally rejected a U.S. request to extradite Mohammed Ali Hamadi, accused hijacker of a TWA jetliner in 1985, and decided to try him in West Germany instead, a high-ranking government official said.

Hamadi “will be placed on trial before a court in the Federal Republic of Germany for air piracy, murder and other crimes as soon as possible,” Wolfgang Schaeuble, the Bonn chancellery’s state secretary, said in a statement.

“The full force of West German law will be applied,” Schaeuble told a crowded news conference. He did not say when Hamadi’s trial would take place.

Schaeuble said the Cabinet, meeting in a morning session, approved the recommendations of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the interior, justice and foreign ministers that a six-month-old U.S. extradition request for Hamadi be turned down.

He defended the decision, saying that Hamadi would face the same charges, and similar sentences for those crimes, in West Germany as he would have faced in the United States.

Hamadi, a 23-year-old Shia Muslim, is wanted in the United States on charges of air piracy and murder in the June, 1985, hijacking of a TWA airliner to Beirut.

He is accused of being one of four hijackers who killed U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem of Waldorf, Md., and held 39 Americans prisoner for 17 days.

The chancellery official added that Bonn ministers had opposed extradition out of fear for the lives of two West German hostages held in Beirut.

“This decision was not taken lightly,” Schaeuble said. “But the risks it poses for the two West German hostages held in Beirut will be smaller than with the other option.”

Rudolf Cordes and Alfred Schmidt were kidnaped in Beirut shortly after Hamadi was arrested at the Frankfurt airport on Jan. 13. Bonn security sources have said the kidnapers hoped they could either swap the two for Hamadi or at least block the Lebanese suspect’s extradition to the United States.