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From the end of , was effectively governed as a part of East Germany , then a member of the Warsaw Pact , and the American, French, and British Sectors, collectively called West Berlin , were effectively governed as parts of West Germany , a member of NATO . Seldom did the American government exercise power directly in the American sector, except as it affected American military forces stationed in Berlin. In particular, the judgeship of the United States Court for Berlin was vacant except during the trial over which Judge Stern presided. In 1978 , after prodigious diplomatic efforts, NATO had convinced the Warsaw Pact states to sign an international convention on Hijacking , in which each signatory state promised to punish hijackers who land in their territory. On 30 August 1978, Hans Detlef Alexander Tiede and Ingrid Ruske , both East Germans, used a Starting Pistol (not an actual gun) to hijack a Polish passenger aircraft from Gdansk bound for East Berlin's Schönefeld Airport and diverted it instead to the U.S. Air Force base at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin. The West German government was very reluctant to prosecute Tiede and Ruske because of the West German policy of supporting the right of East Germans to flee persecution in the GDR . However, the NATO members did not want to lose the hijacking treaty on which they had worked for so long, consequently the case was prosecuted in the United States Court For Berlin . Over the prosecutor's objections, Judge Stern ruled that the defendants were entitled to be Tried By A Jury . The case against Tiede's co-defendant Ingrid Ruske was dismissed because she had not been notified of her Miranda Rights before signing a confession. Tiede was acquitted on three charges, including highjacking and possession of a firearm, but convicted of taking a hostage. He was sentenced to time served — about nine months. In 1988, Judge Stern's book became the basis of a movie with the same name starring Martin Sheen and Sean Penn . |
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