GERMAN RELEASE OF TERRORIST REVIVES MEMORIES OF GERMAN AND MEDIA WEAKNESSES

By Michael Kraft

by Michael Kraft

Germany�s secret release of a Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist convicted of killing a U.S. Navy diver during the 1985 hijacking of TWA 847 revives memories of past German deals with terrorist and their supporters. The 17- day hijacking ordeal also had touched off a great deal of teeth gnashing about the role of the media in dealing with ongoing terrorist situations.

The long sorry saga, which I saw evolve while working in the State Department Counterterrorism Office, is a forerunner of some of the terrorist-related problems we still face today.

On Tuesday, German court officials confirmed that they had released Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who had been given a life sentence for killing Robert Stethem, a Navy diver from Maryland's Eastern Shore. The young Navy man had been beaten and then shot and dumped on the Beirut airport runway after TWA 847 was hijacked by a group of terrorists on JUne 14 while it was flying from Athens to Rome.

German government officials denied that the release�which took place Thursday�had anything to with the release this weekend of a German archeologist, Susanne Osthoff, who was taken captive in Iraq three weeks ago.

But as the German press agency, DPA said in its story yesterday, �the timing �has raised uncomfortable questions.�

Indeed. Hamadi was eligible for parole in January after 19 years in prison but was released several weeks early. A spokeswoman for the Frankfurt prosecutor�s office was quoted by the New York Times
as "explaining" the release by saying �Everything was OK with him the prison evaluation, the psychologist�s and the prosecutor�s.� This does not explain however why he had to be released, especially at a time when Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, is still causing problems in the Middle East by trying to inflame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and complicating Lebanese politics. And of course things are not OK with Stethem�s poor family, which has been suffering for 20 years because of the hijacking and murder.

The Germans denied that the U.S sought extradition, but this is not true.

I know that after of Hamadi was arrested while entering Germany, the U.S. vigorously sought Hamada�s extradition to the U.S. The Reagan Administration Justice Department even told the Germans that it would waive the death sentence if Hamadi was convicted in U.S. courts.

And State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said Tuesday that the U.S. still wanted to try Hamadi, that they would attempt to bring him to the U.S. (Hamadi is reported to be in Lebanon and this could raise some interesting issues with the Lebanese government, which has declined in the past to turn over to the U.S. some terrorist suspects involved in attacks on Americans.) The New York Times reported that American officials had sought discussions with Germany before Hamadi came up for a parole hearing in January but Hamadi was released and flew to Lebanon last Thursday before any agreement was reached.

Back in 1987 after Hamadi was arrested pursuant to an INTERPOL alert when he entered Germany with explosives in his luggage and the German government refused to extradite him, opposition to the death penalty was only one factor. Two German businessmen were being held hostage at the time in Lebanon as part of the Hezbollah�s kidnapping campaign to force western governments to pressure Kuwait to release two Lebanese linked to Hezbollah who were jailed along with 15 other Dawa terrorist group members for the bombing attacks on the US and French embassies and Kuwait government buildings in Kuwait in 1982. Kuwait at the time was supporting Iraq in the Iraq-Iran war.

The U.S.Government, unable to budge the Germans on extradition, then provided assistance to the German investigators and hired a German lawyer to participate in the proceedings.

The U.S. Government�s fears at the time that Germans would ultimately let Hamadi slip out were not unfounded. They stemmed from Germany�s past history of giving in to terrorist demands. During the heyday of the Red Army Faction, a pro-Marxist group, the Germans repeatedly gave in to the kidnappings and released RAF prisoners. The practice stopped, or at least was suspended, when the terrorists kidnapped and killed one too many prominent figures and the German government finally decided not to give in. The Germans also released three of the 1972 Munich massacre Black September terrorists in another hostage exchange deal after a German Lufthansa jet was hijacked.

�Let�s make a deal� was part of the German approach in other ways too. Germany rejected US efforts to develop a multilateral economic sanctions regime against Iraq, Iran, Libya and other states that supported international terrorists, even though some of the operations by those countries took place on German soil. Germany, along with the Soviet Union and France, enjoyed lucrative contracts with Saddam Hussein�s Iraq as well as Iran. It is more than a coincidence that these countries were the biggest opponents of increasing economic pressures on Iraq before the Bush Administration, rightly or wrongly, concluded that the UN Inspectors regime was crumbling under the European �sanctions fatigue� and proceeded to invade Iraq.

The hostage taking in Lebanon during the 1980�s led to a number of deals, including the notorious Ollie North deal to provide TOW missiles to Iran as a back door approach to obtaining the release of Americans held hostage despite official US policy against rewarding terrorists. As one of my colleagues, a Middle East expert noted, it was a hostage bank with a revolving door �the Lebanese terrorists released one hostage then soon took another. The hostage taking ended after Saddam Hussein�s invasion of Kuwait, when the two Lebanese escaped from their Kuwait jail.

Now we are seeing a replay of the hostage situation in Iraq, although the hostage takers appear to be more diverse, and some are motivated primarily by money as well as a desire to kill foreigners or pressure their governments to withdraw troops or contractors from Iraq.

The TWA hijacking also was forerunner of some familiar media issues. What is the responsibility of the press to avoid disclosing information to terrorists during an on- going event, and how should the media avoid being exploited by the terrorists?

After TWA 847 was hijacked following its departure from Athens, it landed in Algiers. The State Department made a furious effort to keep the plane grounded there. I saw some of the events unfold while serving on the State Department�s Task Force that was established in the Operations Center, having newly arrived in the State Department from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Middle East Subcommittee. I remember Ambassador Robert Oakley, then the State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism, energetically working the phones, trying to get the Red Cross to the Algiers airport to help obtain the release of the captives and keep the plane on the ground. He and other officials were desperately trying to keep the plane in Algiers because they knew that if the plane made it to Beirut, the terrorists would get away.

The plane was in Algiers two days. But then the Associated Press, apparently tipped to the very visible departure of military C-130 transport planes from Ft. Bragg, reported that Delta Force had taken off. This item originally was tucked into a wrap-up but later the AP story was rewritten to emphasize the departure. The later story said Delta Force was headed toward �the region� without specifying exactly where. That evening, while driving home after a long shift on the task force, I heard WTOP radio report that the plane was headed to Algiers.

I knew that was not true. The planes were actually going to a holding area in another country and indeed did not have clearance to land in Algiers at that time. I called WTOP news desk as soon as I got home (this was in the �ancient days� before we had cell phones) and asked them where they got that erroneous story and I urged them to correct their version. An editor said the story had been taken from the AP wire and that�s what the rewrite deskman thought the story said, that the Delta force was heading to Algiers.

It was too late to undo the damage. Within hours, the hijackers suddenly forced the pilot, John Testrake, to fly to Beirut. The high-jackers had radios with them to monitor news reports. We suspected that the WTOP story or a similar version had been picked up by radio stations that could be heard in Algiers or the hijackers had accomplices in Washington who somehow tipped them off. We groaned when we learned the plane was taking off for Beirut, as we knew the hijacking ordeal would be prolonged, possibly in part because a sloppy rewrite man hyped up a news agency story that reported on possible countermeasures and was transmitted around the world.

The hijackers brilliantly manipulated the press, including staging the famous photo of Testrake leaning out the cockpit window with a hijacker pointing a gun at him. But what really touched off the teeth gnashing in State was the decision by TV networks to broadcast live and unedited the chaotic Beirut press conference staged by the hijackers. The exploitation of the hijack victims and the huge block of unedited time gave the terrorists an unprecedented platform. This was early in the age of mini-cams and live feeds. It almost seemed as if the television producers were so eager to demonstrate their capabilities that they forgot they were becoming part of the stories.

Afterwards, there were some discussions within State and with academics and privately with some network officials about encouraging the networks to develop internal guidelines for covering ongoing hostage situations. At least one network developed such guidelines. But those of us involved in crisis management and with the press (I had worked for two wire services in the past) were not optimistic that than any guidelines would hold up during the heat of chasing a dramatic story. The situation would be even more difficult today because of the proliferation of minicams, satellite transmissions and local TV stations who want to have their own person reporting �live from the scene� but often use relativelt inexperienced reporters whose good looks exceed their depth.

Fortunately, we have not had a repetition of the prolonged terrorist hostage situation such as the TWA 847 as hijackings combined with hostage taking decreased markedly since the 1980�s (perhaps because terrorists have more recently opted for blowing up planes instead of hijacking them).

But the basic issues remain of how restrained the press can and should be in reporting the movements or potential movements of SWAT teams, and how can the press avoid being manipulated by terrorist who seek to use them as propaganda outlets. The emergence of media such as Al-Jazeera, the favorite conduit for Bin-Laden�s tapes and tapes of the gruesome beheadings of hostage visits, is not encouraging.

Nor can we take encouragement in the German apparently caving in and quietly releasing Hamadi ahead of schedule. This latest German action again undercuts the international counterterrorism effort. It encourages the terrorists to believe that western nations, especially the Europeans, are soft touches and terrorists can continue their kidnappings for money and/or political motives and expect to be rewarded.

The German government should be ashamed �and brace for more of its citizens being taken hostage.

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