Germany frees Hizbollah killer

Germany has quietly released a Hizbollah member jailed for life for the murder of a US Navy diver, disregarding Washington's desire that he either be extradited or remain behind bars, officials said yesterday. The government said there was no link between Mr Hammadi's release and that of a German hostage in Iraq just days later. "He served his term," Eva Schmierer, a spokesman for Germany's justice ministry, told a news conference. Sources in Berlin and Beirut said earlier that Mohammad Ali Hammadi, convicted of killing Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem in Beirut during the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight and sentenced to life in prison, was flown back to Lebanon last week.

Ms Schmierer said her ministry had never received a formal extradition request from Washington. But diplomats in Berlin said the German government was well aware that the Americans would have liked Mr Hammadi extradited upon release to the US, where he is under indictment for Mr Stethem's murder.

Under German law Mr Hammadi could not have been extradited for crimes for which he has already been convicted and punished - namely murder, air piracy and the possession of explosives.

The US did submit an extradition request to the West German government in 1987, but it was turned down since Mr Hammadi could have faced the death penalty in America.

German government sources said Washington knew Mr Hammadi's release was imminent but had submitted no extradition requests since his 1989 conviction.