The German government has freed a Hezbollah terrorist serving a life sentence in a German jail for murdering a U.S. Navy diver during the hijacking of an American jetliner in 1985.
The German government denied the release was part of any deal involving the recent freeing of a German hostage in Iraq.
Mohammed Ali Hamadi was released last Thursday after serving 19 years of a life sentence. He was suddenly deemed eligible for parole.
'There is no relation between the release of Hamadi and the release of Osthoff,' said Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger told the news conference. She then added, ''He served his term.'
The decision to release Hamadi was deemed a state decision and not a federal government decision by the Germans. The United States had opposed the release of Hamadi and has asked the German government to either deny his 'parole' or send him to the United States. Instead, Hamadi went back to his native Lebanon.
'There was no special treatment,' claimed Ulrich Hermanski, a spokesman for the North Rhine Westphalia state justice ministry in a telephone interview with CNN.
Hamadi was convicted in 1989 of the beating and shooting of Robert Dean Stethem, a 23-year-old U.S. Navy diver whose body was thrown on the tarmac at Beirut airport during the hijacking of TWA Flight 847.
Experts say the decision to release Hamadi could harm relations between the United States and Germany. Germany had pledged to assist the U.S. in the 'War on Terror' but the release of a terrorist convicted of killing an American cannot help relations between the two countries.
