The World - News from Sept. 28, 1988

Flight attendant Hazel Hesp, testifying at the murder and air piracy trial of Mohammed Ali Hamadi, said she believes Hamadi’s accomplice killed U.S. Navy diver Robert D. Stethem aboard a hijacked TWA airliner in 1985. Asked by the West German judge if she knew who killed Stethem, Hesp said that, although she didn’t see who fired the shot, she thinks it was hijacker Hassan Izzaldin. Pilot John Testrake earlier testified that he believed Hamadi killed Stethem. Hesp said that Izzaldin, who is still at large, “seemed to be giving the orders” during the hijacking, in which 39 Americans were held captive for 17 days. Other witnesses have testified that Izzaldin was the more violent of the two hijackers but that both seemed to have equal authority.