German justice

Welcome to Germany, where life imprisonment really means 19 years:

Germany has released Mohammad Ali Hammadi, a Hezbollah member sentenced to life in prison for killing a U.S. Navy diver.

A spokesman of the Justice Ministry in North-Rhine Westphalia, where Hammadi spent the last of his nearly 19 years in prison, confirmed to United Press International that Hammadi had been released last week and has left the country.

Now, lest we forget, this is what happened to the Navy diver, Jason Stethem, as told by TWA stewardess Uli Derickson:

[The German-speaking hijacker] called Robert Stethem to the first-class section. It's a night flight now. The hijacker with grenades took off his own shirt and his undershirt, and he took out a razor blade. I started getting very emotional because I thought of throat cutting. All the lights were turned off in the cabin. Only the galley lights were on. Then the hijacker started cutting his undershirt into small strips. He's blindfolding Stethem. Very tight. And then he takes one of those thick elastic cords from a suitcase cart and ties up his hands, very, very high behind his back and pulls that elastic cord to the very end. Stethem's hands immediately turn white. Then they drag him to the cockpit door and they are beating Robert Stethem with the armrest they ripped off the flight engineer's seat. They were jumping in the air and landing full force on his body. He must have had all his ribs broken. I was sitting only 15 feet away. I couldn't listen to it. I put my fingers in my ears. I will never forget. I could still hear. They put the mike up to his face so his screams could be heard by the outside world. When they were finished, one of the hijackers picked him up like a cat picks up its kitten and dragged him over to a seat.

...Now I'm telling . . . I'm telling Bob -- Robert Stethem -- to hang on. He was in tremendous pain. His arms had lost all feeling. I kept saying to this German-speaking hijacker, "Can I not untie his hands? We're cooperating with you. Why are you doing this to those people?" He said, "No. Leave him alone. He's just an American pig." I kept asking, please. Then he let me untie his hands. It took me five minutes, the elastic was so tight. There was a carving knife hidden in the galley, but I didn't want to bring it out to cut the cord. Then the hijacker told me to take him to a seat in coach. I'm lifting this man over passengers. He was hurt very badly.

Later Stethem was shot and killed, and his body dumped on the tarmac. One of his killers, now in his late 30s, is a free man. I don't even know what to say.