The World - News from Nov. 1, 1988

Lebanese hijacker Mohammed Ali Hamadi was probably a minor when he seized a TWA plane in 1985, an anthropologist testified, which could mean he would not be liable to the maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Manfred Kunter told a West German court that after examining X-rays and other data, he would put Hamadi’s birth at “1965, plus or minus half a year”--or under 21 at the time. Hamadi, a Shia Muslim, is charged with air piracy and murder in the hijacking. He has admitted commandeering the plane but denies killing an American, Robert Dean Stethem. Hamadi has said he was born in the late 1960s.