Mustafa Ali Ahmed and four alleged accomplices today were committed to trial for premeditated murder as the examination into the death of J. Jacoby, Jewish colonist, and his nine-year-old son in Nahalal on December 22, last year, concluded before a British Magistrate.
Jacoby and his son were killed in their house in Nahalal by a bomb thrown by a group of persons. Today several witnesses, all Moslems, told the court that on December 22, last year, they saw the defendants leaving Sefourie in the direction of Nahalal, and later saw them returning from Nahalal. Witnesses testified that the defendants attended prayer services in the Sefourie Mosque before proceeding to Jacoby’s house in Nahalal. The Chairman of the Sefourie Young Men’s Moslem Association confirmed the testimony given yesterday that all the defendants were members of the association. If Ali Ahmed and his associates are found guilty they are liable to suffer the death penalty.
ALI AHMED CONFESSES
At yesterday’s session of the examination two British Palestine police officers, Miller and Cosgrove, gave the most conclusive and sensational evidence in the case. They said that Ali Ahmed confessed to them that he was one of five men who bombed Jacoby’s house. They stated that they searched the village house of Ali Ahmed in Sefourie on April 19 and found a revolver, some bullets and a bomb ready for use. They told the court that they examined the bomb and found its structure and contents similar to the bomb that was thrown into Jacoby’s house.
After a grilling, they asserted, Ali Ahmed confessed he was implicated in the bombing and gradually disclosed the names of four Arabs whom he said were accomplices.
DESCRIBES BOMBING
On June 3 Ali Ahmed gave the police officers the following description of the bombing:
He and four other men walked toward Jacoby’s house on December 22, last year. Two of the five waited on the outskirts of Nahalal while three entered Jacoby’s vineyard. While he waited nearby his two friends threw the bomb into the house. Then they all fled and the two men who threw the bomb escaped to Haifa while he and the other two who had waited on the outskirts of Nahalal escaped to Sefourie.
After Police Officers Miller and Cosgrove had left the witness box Sergeant Ahmed Naiff gave evidence, stating that he had heard one of the defendants, named Ahmed Abdulkader, talking with a Nazareth advocate in an adjoining room and stating that “a secret terrorist society exists in Sefourie,” Later declared Naiff, Abdulkader confessed that all the defendants in the Jacoby murder case are members of the Young Men’s Moslem Association.
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