German Hostage Offered in Trade for Suspect in Hijacking
The kidnapers of two West German businessmen said Friday they will free one of the captives within 10 days if the Bonn government releases an accused Lebanese terrorist charged with killing an American on a hijacked TWA jetliner.
But the group claiming to hold Alfred Schmidt, 47, and Rudolph Cordes, 53, warned in a statement sent to a Western news agency in Muslim West Beirut that “any mistake” by West Germany would lead to “real catastrophes.”
The group said it had been promised that West Germany would release suspected Lebanese hijacker Mohammed Ali Hamadei--arrested for carrying explosives at Frankfurt Airport on Jan. 13--and one of his brothers also held in Germany.
Bonn has said in the past that it would not trade the freedom of the Hamadei brothers for release of the German hostages and has put Hamadei on trial for murder and air piracy in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner to Beirut and the killing of a U.S passenger, Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem.
Schmidt, 47, was abducted Jan. 21. Cordes, business manager of the Frankfurt-based chemical and pharmaceutical company Hoescht, was seized Jan. 17 by gunmen on the highway to Beirut airport.
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