Kidnaper Pressure Won’t Affect Hijack Trial, Judge Says
The chief judge at the trial of admitted hijacker Mohammed Ali Hamadi said Monday the verdict will be delivered May 17 and that pressure from kidnapers who seized a West German in Lebanon won’t affect the case.
In Lebanon, two West Germans said Monday they were freed by kidnapers after being held briefly to transmit demands of abductors holding a third German hostage, Markus Quint.
Last Friday, an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon said the freed Germans, Heinrich Struebig and Petra Schnitzler, told him the kidnapers threaten to kill Quint unless Hamadi receives a mild sentence.
But Judge Heiner Mueckenberger declared on Monday: “It should be said that if anyone thinks this can influence us, they are wrong. Here we are dealing with German law and it shall remain so.”
Hamadi, a Lebanese Shiite Muslim, is charged with murder and air piracy in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner. U.S. Navy diver Robert D. Stethem was killed and 39 Americans were held hostage for 17 days after TWA Flight 847 was seized and diverted to Beirut.
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