German Perfidy, Right on Schedule

BACKGROUND

In June 1985, TWA flight 847 from Athens was hijacked by Hizballah terrorists, during which 23-year-old U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem was tortured, beaten, and trampled to death. They threw his body off the plane, like garbage. Stethem was so badly beaten that he could only be identified from fingerprints. In 1995, the USS Stethem was named after the late Robert Stethem to recognize his heroism.

Mohammad Ali Hamadi, one of the terrorists who murdered Stethem, was captured by the German government in 1987. He was carrying explosives that were the same kind used in previous attacks. Hamadi, who remains under indictment in the U.S., was tried by the Germans, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. There was always an understanding that Hamadi would be extradited to the U.S. to face justice, if the Germans ever released him.

THE TRADE

Fast forward. In November, a German national was kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq; as always, they threatened to kill her unless the Germans stopped cooperating with the Iraqi government. This Sunday, she was abruptly released and doing well at the German embassy in Baghdad, so we've been waiting to hear what the terrorists managed to extort from the German government this time.

The foreign ministry said on Monday that the government and the German embassy in Iraq had been involved in Osthoff's release, but declined to give details.

Security experts say Germany has paid ransoms for hostages in the past and would probably have done so for Osthoff.

And whaddya know, someone else was freed last week too.

The Stethem family learned Friday that Hamadi was released to freedom in Lebanon. Despite life without parole, Hamadi was up for parole twice and served only 16 years in prison. And unlike all other extraditions sought by the U.S. under an extradition treaty with Germany, Germany violated the extradition treaty and Hamadi's extradition was not granted. Reportedly, Germany did this for two reasons: 1) to gain the release of Susanne Osthoff from terrorists in Iraq and 2) in retribution for reported CIA terrorist camps in Europe.

In other words, the allegedly new and improved German government continues to be more scared of pissing off the jihadis than they are of pissing off the U.S. -- Germany's most reliable ally, strongest protector, and among the largest employers. Germany has been selling out the U.S. and painting themselves into a corner every day since President Bush took office. What is "just business" to Europeans is the difference between victory and defeat to the rest of us. Well, we can't control them, but we can control us -- and we've been letting them screw us this way for four years. And they'll keep doing it until we make them feel some pain.

More sickening details here and here.

COLLUSION?

One final possibility that remains open: many kidnappings of Westerners in Iraq, including this one, appear to be staged. That is, Europeans sympathetic to the terrorists' goals travel to Iraq, meet and stay with "kidnappers," and cooperate in making the video that inevitably convinces spineless European governments to surrender to the terrorists' demands. Money for explosives, comrades released, etc. Some are committed radicals, like Giuliana Sgrena; Osthoff seems to have gone native.

In an interview with a German newspaper [Osthoff's mother] said that her daughter was "more Iraqi than German." Osthoff is a trained archeologist who has been doing aid work in Iraq for several years. The 43 year old convert to Islam was married to an Arab and speaks fluent Arabic. In 2003 she made her "first humanitarian trip to Iraq."

To be clear, there is as yet no conclusive evidence that Osthoff's kidnapping was in fact a voluntary, joint effort calculated to extort aid from the German government. However, there is no evidence that it wasn't, either. If European governments keep being had, it's at our expense. And this is why good neighbors and true allies don't negotiate with terrorists, EVER.

For the conspiratorially-minded, there is also the possibility that European governments have full knowledge of these fake kidnappings, and deliberately use them as an instrument to aid the insurgency against U.S. and Iraqi troops. This is less of a stretch than it may seem, considering that the Oil-For-Food program was basically the pre-war equivalent to such belligerence.

IN OTHER GERMAN NEWS

The German government has permitted the "Butcher of Tashkent" to enter the country -- and leave again -- without prosecuting him. This was in willful violation of the EU travel ban against him, for his role in a massacre in Uzbekistan in May. Bad intel? Nooo. They made a special exception so he could receive life-saving cancer treatment in Hannover. How sweet. And, uh, oh yeah:

Berlin had initially revoked his entry, but then reconsidered its position after the leadership in Tashkent threatened to expel German armed forces from Uzbekistan.

Has Germany ever seen a jackboot it didn't stoop to lick?