Germany has secretly released a Hizbullah member jailed for life for killing a U.S. Navy diver and returned him to Lebanon despite an extradition request from the United States, Lebanese political sources said Tuesday.
They said Mohammad Ali Hammadi, convicted of killing Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem during the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight to Beirut and sentenced to life without parole, was flown back to Beirut last week.
Diplomatic sources in Germany confirmed Hammadi’s release.
Hammadi was captured in 1987 and all attempts to have him exchanged with German hostages held in Lebanon in the late 1980s and early 1990s failed. Hammadi’s brother, Abdul-Hadi, was a senior security official of Hizbullah at the time.