Gunmen Seize German in West Beirut

A band of armed men disguised as police kidnaped a West German today after he stepped out of his car in one of the busiest districts of Syrian-controlled West Beirut.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the kidnaping appeared to be related to the West German trial of Ali Abbas Hamadi, who is charged with complicity in the 1987 kidnaping of two West German businessmen in Beirut.

In the Dusseldorf courtroom, the judge said that if today’s Beirut kidnaping is related to the trial, “It could make the situation tougher here. . . . “

Today’s kidnap victim was identified by police and relatives as Ralph Rudolf Schray, 30, who works for a civil engineering firm and has lived in Lebanon for most of his life.

A police spokesman, who in compliance with regulations cannot be identified, said seven gunmen abducted Schray as he walked across a side street off Muslim West Beirut’s Hamra commercial thoroughfare at 11:05 a.m.

The assailants were in three cars and “some of them wore police uniforms,” the police spokesman said, adding that they “pushed Schray into one of their cars at gunpoint and sped off.”

Born in Beirut

A relative said Schray was born in Beirut in 1957 to a West German father and a Palestinian mother. The relative, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Schray has been registered since birth as a West German.

A police spokesman said the kidnapers telephoned Schray’s uncle, George Abu Nassar, and informed him of the abduction but made no demands.

In West Germany, Mohammed Hamadi, 23, today refused to testify at the trial of his 29-year-old brother Abbas.

Abbas Hamadi is charged with kidnaping West Germans Rudolf Cordes and Alfred Schmidt in Beirut less than a week after his brother’s Jan. 13, 1987, arrest at Frankfurt airport in connection with the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner to Beirut.

Schmidt was released in September. Cordes remains a captive.

Mohammed Hamadi is wanted in the United States on charges of air piracy and murder in the TWA hijacking.