U.S. Asked Germany Not to Free Terrorist

Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales personally asked the German government not to release a terrorist convicted of killing a U.S. Navy diver but was rebuffed, the Bush administration said Wednesday.

Mohammed Ali Hamadi was paroled by German authorities after serving 19 years of a life sentence for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA plane, during which Robert Dean Stethem, 23, was killed.

“We did, at senior levels at the U.S. government, contact the German authorities to emphasize that we thought it was important that he serve out his entire term, but we did so with a full understanding that under German law it was highly likely that he was going to be released,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because discussions are continuing, said the United States believed that Hamadi had been released from temporary custody in Lebanon and had disappeared.

Lebanon is an emerging U.S. ally in the Middle East, with a new democratically elected government and growing diplomatic and economic ties with the West. Lebanon’s Syria-allied president remains in office, however, and the country is still largely defined by sectarian politics.

The United States has no extradition treaty with Lebanon.

“I think what I can assure anybody who’s listening, including Mr. Hamadi, is that we will track him down,” McCormack said.

“We will find him. And we will bring him to justice in the United States for what he’s done,” he said.

Lebanese authorities questioned whether they had any grounds to hand over Hamadi.

U.S. authorities “could have asked Germany to hand him over to the United States. Why are they asking us?” Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Wednesday.

The United States sought to prosecute Hamadi when he was arrested in Germany, but the Germans would not turn him over.

The United States had periodically asked that Hamadi not be released early, requests that intensified as his potential parole date approached.