[1] On 6 July 1993, he was removed from his post by the German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger following a row over the alleged police shooting of a suspected terrorist, Wolfgang Grams, on 27 June.
In 2014, von Stahl and Bruno Jost received the inaugural Rule of Law Award from the American Federal Bar Association, for their work in establishing the involvement of the Iranian government in the 1992 Mykonos restaurant assassinations.
[4][5] The Iranian-born writer Roya Hakakian credits von Stahl, in his capacity as Attorney General, for protecting the German federal prosecution from political and diplomatic pressure.
Since reunification, Germany had the strongest bilateral relation with Iran among European nations, and the FDP was in favor of greater trade and outreach to the Iranian regime.
According to Hakakian, von Stahl "went against the wishes of some of the most powerful figures in his own party" in his indictment of Kazem Darabi in 1993 by naming the intelligence agency of Iran as the planner of the assassination.