West Germany warned its diplomats to be on the alert for terrorist attacks after TWA hijacker Mohammed Ali Hamadi was sentenced to life imprisonment, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday.
The mass-circulation Bild newspaper also reported that West German security authorities are watching for possible terrorist attacks at home following the Lebanese Moslem terrorist's conviction Wednesday."We have notified our diplomatic personnel of the verdict and advised them to be on the alert," Foreign Ministry spokesman Rainer Mueller said.
A Frankfurt court convicted Hamadi of murder, air piracy and other charges in connection with the June 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, during which U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem was brutally beaten and shot to death and 39 Americans were held hostage for 17 days.
Mueller also said his ministry has no information about two West German relief workers reported kidnapped in Beirut the day before Hamadi was sentenced.
Heinrich Struebig, 48, and Thomas Kemptner, 28, disappeared from the Beirut branch of the ASME-Humanitas relief agency along with West German nurse Petra Schnitzler. Schnitzler, 26, was later freed by searchers who found her in the trunk of a car during a search for thieves.