| 21 December 2005 Home for the Holidays Mohammed Ali Hamadi got the ultimate Christmas present this year, even if he is not observant of these particular holidays. The Germans are observing the spirit of the seasons, and he is free after a nineteen-year life sentence in one of their prisons for his role in a hi-jacking. It was TWA flight 847, Athens to Rome , and Mr. Hamadi is back in Lebanon someplace. I am not sure where. It is an undisclosed location, for a perfectly good reason. Some Americans are likely to be looking for him. Nineteen years ago, Mr. Hamadi was a 22-year old radical, imbued with the struggle against Israel 's occupation of his homeland. He was pretty pumped up before he shot the sailor from Waldorf , Maryland , and then helped dump the body out of the TWA jet onto the tarmac at Beirut International. You may remember. I know I do. It was one of those hi-jacking things that brought radical Islamic anger to the attention of the world press. The terrorists discovered that Robert Stethem was an active duty member of the U.S. Navy when they inspected the documents of their hostages. He was murdered as an example at the front end of the seventeen-day mini-series. There were no direct witnesses to the act of Stethem's murder, though it was acknowledged that Mr. Hamadi had the murder weapon in his hand before and after the shot, and that he had ridiculed Stethem as he bound him, and blindfolded him, and savagely beat him. It was a function of heightened readiness that Mr. Hamadi was later arrested in 1987 as he transited the airport in Frankfurt am Main. He had three jugs of chemical explosive in his luggage, with the apparent intent of further direct action when he was busted. Or let's be charitable. It is the holidays, after all. Maybe he was just going to blow something up with complete respect for innocent life. It was at that time when we began seriously to look at the documents we carried when we traveled, and we began to refer to the red Official Passport as the “Shoot Me First” document. Anyhow, there were a lot of factors in play. The Germans had a hot potato on their hands. They could not contemplate extraditing Mr. Hamadi to the United States , even though it was a U.S. aircraft that was hi-jacked, and a U.S. citizen that was murdered. After all, the United States had the death penalty, and the possibility that he would be executed would constitute inhumane treatment, not to mention having repercussions for the German citizens who were in the hands of the radicals. That is true today as it was then. Given all the hostage taking, at the time of his trial in 1989, everyone seemed satisfied with the life sentence. It sounded pretty good, even if it was not true, and the rest of Mr. Hamadi's buddies were still at large anyway. According to the press, American officials were expecting parole hearing to happen this year. But were startled that by the time the results were announced, Mr. Hamadi had already flown the coup. German-American relations are tense right now over the activities of scoop-and-snatch teams that have been operating in extra-legal fashion around the world, and black airliners and clandestine detention facilities. Generally speaking, I am opposed to kidnapping, regardless of who is doing it, and specifically, I prefer the rule of law, even when it is a bit of an ass. But I must say that if I were Mr. Hamadi, I would be looking over my shoulder as I recuperated. He is still under indictment in the U.S. for the killing of Petty Officer Stethem, and there is no statute of limitations for murder. Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra www.vicsocotra .com |