Palestine’s undivided attention today centered on the court-house here where the magistrate’s examination into the murder on June 16 of Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, brilliant young Zionist leader, was continued and police witnesses added to the mounting pile of testimony against Abraham Stavsky, extremist Revisionist, and Zvi Rosenblatt, also a Revisionist, who are under arrest in connection with the crime.
So great is the interest in the case that the dingy court-room was crowded again today as it was yesterday during the dramatic scenes when Mrs. Sima Arlosoroff, the murdered man’s widow, took the stand and declared the two defendants were her husband’s slayers.
The newspapers of the country are heavily featuring the examination, issuing special editions and reporting the proceedings verbatim.
Today’s witnesses were Major Stafford, assistant superintendent of the Jaffa police, and Major Faraday, deputy superintendent of the Tel Aviv police.
IDENTIFICATION POSSIBLE
Stafford, under examination by Public Prosecutor Shitrit, described the identification parades at which Mrs. Arlosoroff had picked out the two suspects and revealed that he had personally checked on the possibility of identifying people at night in the place and under the conditions prevailing at the time of the murder. He said that he had gone to the scene of the crime and from his experiment in identifying an Arab riding by on a camel at midnight convinced himself that it would have been possible for Mrs. Arlosoroff to have obtained a picture of the assassins clear enough to form the basis for later identification.
He declared that Mrs. Arlosoroff, in identifying Rosenblatt, wished to see him unshaven because in the line-up he had been freshly shaven and appeared pale and younger. A few days later, he said, she recognized Rosenblatt’s jacket from among ten others.
Faraday’s evidence was concerned chiefly with the foot-prints on the beach and at the scene of the shooting. One of the Bedouin trackers, he stated, recognized the prints of a man running as Stavsky’s, but another identified both the traces of a man running and later, walking, as those of Stavsky.
WANTED LAWYER
After the trackers had pointed out Stavsky as the man they said left the prints, Stavsky said, “Of course these are my tracks. I want a lawyer,” according to the witness.
Under British procedure, counsel for the accused is not allowed to cross-examine witnesses in the magistrate’s hearing but the accused themselves are allowed to do so. Stavsky utilized this right to obtain from Major Faraday the admission that the prisoner had been brought to the scene handcuffed but had been freed during the time necessary for him to run and walk to provide footprints for comparison with those at the scene of the crime.
MINZ FORGOTTEN
Although Yehuda Minz, 19-year-old member of the Revisionist youth group, Brith Trumpeldor, is also held in connection with the murder, there has been little attention paid to him thus far in the examination. Major Stafford said he would produce several witnesses who saw the youth running on the beach after the murder.
Rosenblat, who Mrs. Aslororoff said yesterday was the man who fired the shots at her husband, was not involved in the testimony today. Since he was not arrested until six weeks after the crime was committed, witnesses explained today, it was not possible to compare his footprints with the original tracks on the sand made at the time of the murder.
The investigation will continue in Jaffa magistrate’s court tomorrow.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
