Germany is trying to use its contacts with Iranians and Syrians to help Israel gain freedom for its missing airman Ron Arad, shot down over Lebanon in 1986, diplomatic sources here said this week.
But quite apart from the Arad case and the Bonn government’s denials notwithstanding, a deal seems to be imminent to exchange the imprisoned Hamadi brothers for two Germans held hostages by the Hamadi clan in Lebanon.
Rumors here and in Lebanon said the German relief workers Heinrich Strubig and Thomas Kemptner would be released by New Year’s Day, while the brothers Mohammed and Abbas Hamadi would be pardoned later in 1992.
Mohammed Hamadi is serving a life sentence for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner and the murder of a passenger, U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem.
His brother, Abbas, is serving 13 years in jail for kidnapping two other German hostages in Lebanon in an unsuccessful ploy to free his brother.
Those hostages were subsequently freed.
A deal for the last two remaining German hostages would culminate a U.N.-led effort to free all Westerners held by various groups in Lebanon.
But it would not include seven Israel Defense Force servicemen missing in action in Lebanon for as long as 10 years.
Only Arad, an air force navigator, is presumed to be alive.
The efforts to free Strubig and Kemptner, in any event, are unrelated to Arad’s case, according to diplomatic sources here.
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