They don't like to do it, but our prosecutors can waive the death penalty. If you read Debbie Schlussel's take, Germany Releases US Patriot's Hezbollah Murderer-Trades Terrorist Murderer for hostage in Iraq, it's not clear the German government is the only one responsible for his release. Personally, I'd like to know if a recent extradition request was made based on his parole, or if we're discussing the original request bacy in 1987. IMO, if this was a hostage swap, it was a very bad idea.
Top ranking federal officials--U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy III, FBI Special Agent in Charge for Michigan Daniel Roberts, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Special Agent in Charge for Michigan and Ohio Brian Moskowitz, Citizenship and Immigration Services official Carol Jenifer--recently broke pita at the Detroit-area mosque of one of Hezbollah's and Iran's top agents in the United States. They laughed with him about Hezbollah being on the State Department terrorist list, seeming to scratch their heads as to why it's on the list. They clapped enthusiastically when he described what's going on in Southern Lebanon as "resistance, not terrorism."It's not rocket science to make correct predictions like we make on this site--that Hamadi would be set free or that Islamic Jihad frontman Sami Al-Arian would be acquitted. Clueless, spineless appeasers like Murphy, Roberts, Moskowitz, and Jenifer, and the German government are running the show--and that makes the prospect of terrorists going free very predictable.
Robert Stethem must be looking down from Heaven and trying to make sense of what is happening here on mortal earth. He was an American patriot and for that, faced a brutal, early death. He would have been around 43, today. Around the same age, Murphy, Roberts, Moskowitz et al are patriotic only to themselves and their aggressive ambitions--and each continues to be promoted. When President Bush said, "You are either on our side or the terrorists' side," his own federal officials who oversee these three must not have been listening. (Moskowitz' boss, ICE Director of Investigations Marcy Forman-Friedman, reportedly told other ICE officials that she's glad Moskowitz "smoothed things over with the Islamic community of Detroit." That, not catching terrorists, is the priority at ICE.)
I still don't understand what legal angle the U.S. would have used to get this guy extradited from Germany.