Posted on 12/20/2005 7:10:50 AM PST by minus_273
BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- A Hezbollah militant sentenced to life in Germany for murdering a U.S. Navy diver during the 1985 hijacking of a U.S. jetliner has been freed, officials said.
The German government denied on Tuesday the release was related to the freeing of a German hostage in Iraq.
Mohammed Ali Hamadi was released Thursday and allowed to return to his native Lebanon on the next day, after qualifying for parole after 19 years in prison, said Ulrich Hermanski, spokesman for the North Rhine Wesphalia state justice ministry.
"There was no special treatment," Hermanski said in a telephone interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
He will not be forgotten, nor the jihadist enemy forgiven!
Interesting take on the events involved in this hostage release. It is hard to imagine that Hezbollah is not one of the very active foreign groups operating in Iraq. Then again they may only have a minimal presence and must coordinate with al-Qaeda as to where they operate. That assumes al-Qaeda is truly the main foreign player in the game. Who knows. There are so damn many different goons squads involved one often can be hesitant to place the blame on a given group unless specifically marke out as being the culprit.
Good post, lots of meat there to chew on.
Understand your point but you are wrong in this instance. 18 USC 32 makes it a federal offense to hijack an aircraft wherever the hijacking may occur. And if a death occurs, the crime is subject to the death penalty. 18 USC 34. Jurisdiction is based on the old common law theory of "universal jurisdiction that was applicable to pirates.
I understand the points you and Michael are making about the German justice system, and you have more grounds than us to be outraged since it is your system (I would be furious if a murder here was out in 15), but in this case they should have honored the extradition request rather than taken over a case which, as you acknowledge, they had no real connection to.
Also, active duty personal flying on commercial flights is a fairly common practice.
We did. Most cities were utterly destroyed. Dresden was incinerated and might as well have been nuked. Also bear in mind that while this bombing campaign raged on, Germany captured and kept alive nearly 20,000 American airmen who were shot down during WWII. Yes, they kept alive the very people trying to kill them and released them at the end of the war.
I can assure you their fate in Japanese hands would have been the opposite. I guess Japan now gets to keep company with the muslim terrorists on who was the most despicable and evil against our troops.
"Also bear in mind that while this bombing campaign raged on, Germany captured and kept alive nearly 20,000 American airmen who were shot down during WWII. Yes, they kept alive the very people trying to kill them and released them at the end of the war."
So? We should credit them with doing what the Geneva convention called for? We did the same and better.
I don't think the Slavs and other "Untermenschen" would have much sympathy for your admiration of German humanitarianism - neither for that matter would such Germanic people like the Dutch and Belgians who lived under Hitler's boot.
Sure, the Germans treated the average POW better than the Japanese did.
I'm part German myself and once was proud of it. Since that scumbag Schroeder and the other socialist vermin have stabbed my Country - the U.S. - in the back so often with the scurvy French, my feelings for them are far from brotherly. But then my feelings for the Europeans in general have been very poor lately.
As for keeping comapny with Muslim terrorists - I think more Europeans are osculating Islamic butts lately than the Japanese are.
So you're saying that nobody in German custody for murder has been extradited to the United States since 1949?
I remember this one very well. I'm glad the perp is now where he can be "found". Paybacks are a b*tch.
If he's rehabilitated to the point that they freed him, why didn't Germany let him remain in their country? Oh I guess he's not all that rehabilitated.
Maybe we should do like Isreal and the '76 Munich murderers and hunt the bastard down and kill him!
Your memory is right on. Delta Force has been playing on cable these past weeks. The fury over Stethem's torture and execution remains as strong now as the day he was murdered.
Very good post, Diplomat. While allied pilots machine-gunned and strafed masses of civilians huddled by the river during the Dresden raid, trying to escape the firestorm, the Germans kept our captive pilots safe. It says something.
Also Dresden was one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, so besides attacking it being a war crime and crime against the German people, it was also a crime against our own Western Civilization and against ourselves.
You might try focus on opposing our real enemies and get away from your misguided antipathy toward our fellow Westerners. Hate-mongering directed towards the Germans and French is very unappealing to almost all Americans, or perhaps I should say real Americans. It certainly isn't very pretty, and I can't imagine it helps our image with anyone. You certainly don't speak for me, and I think you are being, in the posts on this thread anyway, about as helpful as Jane Fonda during the Vietnam War.
Good job.
The Germans should face their wretchedness.
You are entitled to your own opinion. So am I.
And I doubt very much that the average American has anymore love for the western Europeans at this moment than I do - the thinking ones anyway.
Nor do I particularly appreciate the absurb analogy between my opinions on the subject and Jane Fonda and Viet Nam.
But, like I said, that's your opinion.
Well, they didn't murder our pilots who massacred hundreds of thousands of their civlians, on the other hand.
Speaking of murder, an allied blockade at the end of the First World War resulted in widespread starvation in Germany, something that the British didn't seem all that upset about.
I am not sure about the 50ties and 60ties (Germany was still occupied then and not really free in all its decisions), but since the reintroduction of capital punishment in 1977 (on federal level) for sure nobody except there is a binding assurance that the prisioner is not being executed. For that reason you would not even get Bin Laden the legal way out of Germany.
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