WASHINGTON - The United States on Tuesday said it was disappointed by the release in Germany of a Lebanese member of Hezbollah who had been sentenced to life in prison for a 1985 TWA hijacking and the killing of a US Navy diver on board.

"We are disappointed by the fact that he was released before the end of his sentence," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, referring to Mohammed Ali Hamadi. "The US will make every effort to see that this individual faces justice in the US."

Hamadi was freed by German authorities last Thursday after serving 19 years of his sentence. He returned to Lebanon after his release, a Hezbollah source told AFP on Tuesday.

Hamadi was part of a Hezbollah faction that forced a TWA Boeing 727 with 153 passengers and crew members on board from Athens to fly to Beirut instead of its destination Rome in June 1985. The hijackers subsequently killed one of the passengers, 23-year-old US Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, while the plane was in Beirut.

McCormack said the United States would track down Hamadi until he was brought to justice in the US. "We saw that with the person responsible for the murder of an American citizen, Leon Klinghoffer, we tracked that person down and we brought them to justice in the United States," he said. "It doesn't matter how long it takes, but we will track them down and they will face justice in the United States."

Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old wheelchair-bound American Jew, was killed and dumped into the sea by Palestinian hijackers on board a cruise ship in 1984. The mastermind behind the attack was captured in 2003.

McCormack said Washington was in contact with Lebanese authorities concerning Hamadi but the issue was complicated by the fact that the US has no extradition treaty with the Lebanese government.

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