The World - News from Jan. 4, 1988

A West German official said there will be no exchange of an Arab jailed in West Germany for a West German held hostage in Beirut. Ali Abbas Hamadi, 29, is to go on trial this week on a charge of complicity in the kidnaping of two West Germans in Beirut a year ago. “There will be no trade,” Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann told the Die Welt newspaper. “No matter what the verdict is, there will be no immoral trade.” Hamadi is the brother of Mohammed Ali Hamadi, 23, who is accused of hijacking a U.S. airliner in 1985 and killing one of its American passengers. West German businessmen Alfred Schmidt and Rudolf Cordes were abducted in an effort to force the release of the younger Hamadi, who was arrested at Frankfurt airport last January. Schmidt has been released; Cordes still is a captive.