News Brief

A series of dramatic incidents were unfolded be fore a packed courtroom here today as Mrs. Sima Arlosoroff, widow of Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, head of the political department of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and Zionist labor leader, took the stand in magistrate’s court and confronted two of the men accused of assassinating her husband on the night of June 16.

Pale and worn and speaking in a low voice, Mrs. Arlosoroff, under the questioning of Public Prosecutor Shitrit, recounted Dr. Arlosoroff’s activities from the time he returned to Tel Aviv from Europe to the moment he fell mortally wounded outside the old Moslem cemetery near the Tel Aviv seashore.

TWO MEN FOLLOWED THEM

After dinner at the Kaetedan pension, she said, she and her husband, at about nine-thirty o’clock, left the pension for a stroll along the seashore. Anxious because she had noticed two men following them, she asked her husband to return, she said, but he insisted there was no danger and they continued walking.

She first noticed the two men following them, she testified, when they were near the Levkowich factory. The pair passed them several times and she was consequently able to obtain a good impression of their looks. At the prosecutor’s request she drew a diagram of the positions of all four at the moment of the murder and handed the diagram to the court. She did not remember, she said, whether one or two shots were fired.

As soon as the shots were fired, she testified, she frantically ran for aid, crying, “Help! Help! Jews shot him.” Dr. Arlosoroff, who had fallen to the ground, interrupted her, she said, and to her cry that Jews had shot him, interposed, “No, Sima.”

A hushed court-room heard this part of the testimony which was given in a low voice which occasionally broke, revealing the agitation of the witness at having to live through the scene of her husband’s death again.

FIRST STATEMENT TO RICE

Following the shooting, Mrs. Arlosoroff gave her first statement to Captain Rice of the Palestine police at three o’clock in the morning, she declared. She gave him full descriptions of the assailants. The illumination of the stars, she declared, was sufficient for her to get a good mental picture of both men.

Continuing her evidence, she said she picked out both men later in identification parades by their faces, build and gait. One of the dramatic moments of the day occurred here, when, at the request of the prosecutor that she point out the two men, she rose on the witness stand and pointed toward Abraham Stavsky and Zvi Rosenblatt, the two Revisionists held in connection with the crime, who were seated in the court-room between police officers. In a clear, firm voice, she declared she was convinced they were the men.

DISGUISED VOICE

When she heard their voices during the identification parades, she testified, she got the impression that Stavsky was disguising his voice. Looking steadily at Rosenblatt, she said she was even more positive he was one of the pair when she saw him unshaven at Captain Rice’s office in Jerusalem a few days after the identification parade.

A second dramatic scene occurred