Gonzales asked Germany to hold hijacker

WASHINGTON --Attorney General Alberto Gonzales personally asked the German government not to release a terrorist accused of killing a Navy diver, but was rebuffed, the Bush administration said Wednesday.

Mohammed Ali Hamadi was freed on parole by German authorities after serving 19 years of a life sentence for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA plane during which a U.S. Navy diver was killed. The 17-day ordeal riveted the United States and brought Middle East terrorism home for many Americans.

"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," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because discussions are ongoing, said the United States believes Hamadi was released from temporary custody in Lebanon and has disappeared.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/12/21/gonzales_asked_germany_to_hold_hijacker/?rss_id=Boston.com+%2F+News

they could have agreed to a mutually beneficial solution. Now we all pay the price.

So the US Thugs can put him to death.

U.S. to put him on the rack.

It tells everyone out there that, if you want prisoners released, take hostages. What happened back in 1985 was murder, period. Hammadi should never have been let go. This will backfire, badly. Worse than badly.

Bring on the flames.

That's the way it works. The Germans apparently disagree with you about his sentence. That's their prerogative.

Also, I don't understand the basis for the US extadition request. Is the US government saying it can prosecute someone for killing a US citizen no matter where or when? Is this reciprocal?

on a TWA aircraft with a TWA crew. This release means it's open season on American citizens everywhere. Hammadi should be extradited to the U. S.

Blame the US death penalty for that. Civilized countries don't extradite people to be murdered by the state.

FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR . . . OPEN SEASON OPEN SEASON OPEN SEASON OPEN SEASON . . . MORE PRESIDENTIAL POWER MORE PRESIDENTIAL POWER MORE PRESIDENTIAL POWER MORE PRESIDENTIAL POWER . . .

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And this is Democratic Underground, not the PNAC conference rooms.

"And this is Democratic Underground, not the PNAC conference rooms."

Dissent is not allowed here? Who put you in charge?

the lies and the fear of this Administration and its lapdog media, and the control that this constant fear peddling and war mongering has over gained over the U.S., and, I think I speak for most of us here, the need to retain and reassert the checks and balances to a power hungry executive bent on seizing civil liberties without any regard for the rule of law, and when someone is sentenced by a sovereign government with due process of law, they cannot be held longer than the sentence justly handed down, similar to the timeless rule of law that innocent people cannot be held in cages and navy brigs for years on end without charge and without due process of law.

Your poster boy is a cold-blooded killer.

Your poster boy Secretary of Defense is a fucking Nazi.

Prisoners released? Hostages? What?

The man was paroled, not released as part of a hostage exchange. He served 19 years of his life sentence for the murder in a German prison, which is probably about standard for those doing life in Germany. In very few countries do you get sent away for 99 years or 375 years or other such nonsenses as in the United States.

What backfire do you have in mind?

German hostage released in Iraq

"No connection," authorities say. Whatever.

Note that "Hammadi" is the more often seen spelling of the killer's name.

would be quite surprising, to say the least.

A German weekly magazine, Stern, reported Wednesday that the abductors had been identified as members of a western Iraqi tribe, the Duleimi. It said German envoys had apparently been in talks with Duleimi mediators for a period of two weeks.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/article_1070662.php/German_ex-hostage_Osthoff_leaves_Iraq_driver_suspected

:sarcasm:

Mr. Hammadi's parole is standard, and came up within a standard timeframe. You'd also have to believe the outlandish proposition that Sunni tribespeople in West-Central Iraq give a flying fuck about a Hezbollah prisoner jailed for 20 years in Germany! Your imagination has run rampant. Tellingly, your only proof for your assertion is the phrase "Whatever." Whatever, indeed.

The Federal Government can do just about nothing to hold a convict, when the responsible state decides that he has served his sentence.

According to German law, Hamadi has served the full term; there is a distinction between "for life" and "really for life" in the criminal code.

Shouldn't Germany follow it's own laws?

Lebanon criticised on Wednesday U.S. demands that it hand over a Hizbollah hijacker released by Germany after nearly 19 years in jail for murdering an American. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Lebanon's judicial authorities were looking at the legal status of Mohammad Ali Hammadi, who was freed quietly last week and immediately returned to Lebanon despite objections from Washington, which has vowed to bring him from Lebanon to face a U.S. judge.

"Originally they (the U.S. government) could have requested that Germany hand him over. Why are they asking us?" Siniora told reporters. "He served his sentence in Germany and there are measures that will be completed in Lebanon ... Why are they asking us now?" Hammadi was sentenced to life imprisonment by a German court for his role in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner and the murder of U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem in Beirut.

Siniora said Hammadi had served a term close to what he would have faced if he had been convicted in Lebanon. He also said the judiciary was exploring whether his crime was covered by a general amnesty after Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war. Washington, which sought to stop Mohammad Ali Hammadi's release, vowed to press Lebanon to hand him over and did not rule out using force to grab a man notorious in America for dumping Stethem's corpse onto a tarmac in Beirut.

Washington asked Berlin not to free Hammadi but did not renew a request he be handed over because its extradition treaty with Germany forbids such a transfer if somebody has been punished for their crimes, according to U.S. officials.
The United States considers Hammadi a threat and wants to bring him before a U.S. judge to face further punishment, even though it does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon.


http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=6336483&cKey=1135205437000

Meanwhile, Orlando Bosch masterminds the bombing of a Cuban airplane in 1973 and kills 73 people, including the Cuban gold medal fencing team. He gets asylum in the US and is pardoned by #41. The guy that admitted planting the bomb gets 20 years.

Equal justice?

that Hammadi be brought to the US for trial.

Hammadi was sentenced by the courts of another free, western country. Trying him again for the same crime has some rather disturbing angles on international law.

in the U. S. legal system for his killing of a U. S. citizen. The United States has legal jurisdiction, and it is entirely justified in trying Hammadi.

Come on, we're taking people off planes that are innocent and hauling them places to be tortured? You think they're gonna let somebody actually proven to have done something walk away?? Think again. He's a walking dead man. If we don't get him we'll hire somebody who will. And I'm not going to feel too bad about that one.

We should be able to find and kill him.

US commercial jet, hijacked flying from Greece,
man killed in Lebanon.

{correct me if I am wrong here}
the only connection to Germany is
that is where he was so-called 'arrested'

gets a so-called 'trial'
guest of German so-called 'prison', for 19 years

any who doesn't see the 'Germany thing' as a setup,
needs to open their eyes.

He was arrested in Germany trying to smuggle explosives into the country.
An extradition request was denied, since Germany doesn't extradite to countries, in which the death penalty might be applied.
So he received a regular trial for murder, and was sentenced for life with aggravated guilt (in Germany a life sentence means he can paroled after 15 years, aggravated guilt makes his minimum prison term longer, to about 17-23 years average).

After 19 years his motion for parole was finally approved and he was sent to Lebanon, where he will probaly face additional charges.

Now where do you think Germany went wrong?

Should Germany have sent him to the US to face a second trial for the same crime? Should he serve a longer term than other murderers in Germany, because the victim was a US citizen?

I wonder why you placed the words 'arrested', 'trial', and 'prison' in hyphens...

my take on this is,

the 'explosives conviction', was the sham
reason to claim German jurisdiction.

this looks like an, arranged, negotiated, deal

>Now where do you think Germany went wrong?<
It is not Germany's decision to make, in the trial in the matter of,
the hijacking of a US jet in Greek airspace.

So your construction seems unlikely, to say the least.

The man had a trial and spent 19 years in prison, and you call that a setup?

Wow,:think:

looks like 'jurisdiction shopping' to me

what exactly was the crime committed against Germany?

"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 Sean McCormack said."

They were objecting to this man being paroled, and hoping to convince the Germans to cancel the parole.

"We have been in contact with them on the issue," McCormack said. "And at this point I think what I can assure anybody who's listening, including Mr. Hamadi, is that we will track him down. We will find him. And we will bring him to justice in the United States for what he's done."

This threat has no legal standing, but they may be implying that they will rendition him illegally and imprison him in the new U.S. gulag, without any trial. Or simply execute him. Bush no longer cares about the rule of law anyway.

wherever he is found. We know who he is and what he did.

Granted, that doesn't seem to make much difference these days.