A crowded courtroom listened today to the testimory of Abdul Mejid. seventeen-year-old boy who asserls he was bribed to confess the murder of Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, Zionist labor leader who was shot and killed June 16 in Tel Aviv. The youthful Moslem, imperturbable in spite of the tense situation in which he finds himself, described the details of an offer of one thousand ponds made by Abraham Stavsky and Zwi Rosenblatt, Zionist Revisionists charged with the murber, if he should admit the killing.
under cross examination by Horace Samuel, famous English barrister defending the Revisionists, the young Moslem told the court that long ago he admitted to his own lawyer that Stavsky and Rosenblatt approached him and offered the bribe. He said he planned later to withdraw a previous confession made to the police.
Prosecutor Shitrit produced for the record Abdul Mejid’s recantation given to the police on January 22.
In order to prove his contention that the police did not treat with due sttention other possible suspeots and cules in the murder, Mr. Samuel elicited from the young Arab the confession that police had not, in spite of his confession. asked Mejid to indicate the place where the murder was committed. They had not asked him for the revolver which he had used in shooting an Arab. This action by the young Moslem was said by him to be the reason for the bribe offer by the Revisionists who had insisted, said Mejid, that guilt in the first instance would make him immune from conviction for a double crime.
Much importance was attached to an offer made by Auni Bey, well known extreme Nationalist Arab leader, to defend Adbul Mejid.
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.
