World Notes WEST GERMANY

Four years ago, the world watched anxiously as TWA Flight 847 sat on a runway in Beirut airport and 39 American passengers were held hostage for 17 days by gunslinging hijackers. Among the most horrifying images in the intense TV coverage: the body of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, 23, being dumped onto the tarmac. Last week, after a ten-month trial, a Frankfurt court sentenced Lebanese-born Mohammed Ali Hammadi, 24, to life in prison for his role in the hijacking and Stethem's murder. Unable to determine whether Stethem was shot by Hammadi or a second hijacker, still at large, the court ruled that Hammadi was accountable as an accomplice.

Hammadi, who is linked to the radical pro-Iranian group Hizballah, was arrested in January 1987 while trying to smuggle explosives through Frankfurt airport. West Germany denied a U.S. extradition request after Hammadi backers kidnaped two German businessmen in Lebanon, prompting criticism that Bonn was knuckling under to blackmail. Hammadi could have faced the death penalty in the U.S., not an option in Germany. Said Stethem's father Richard: Hammadi "deserves punishment more severe than allowable under German law."