Long bearded Jews in the traditional “yarmulkas,” Jewish youths wearing the labor shirts so common here, girls with fresh shiny manicures and deeply carmined lips, as well as Arabs in their native dress, formed the colorful audience which crowded the small Jerusalem courtroom today where the most discussed case in the history of Jewish Palestine, the trial of the three Revisionist Zionists, Aba Achimeier, Zvi Rosenblatt and Abraham Stavsky for the murder of Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, began.
At seven this morning, two hours before the trial was scheduled to begin, hundreds of people besieged the building seeking admission to the courtroom, entrance to which was limited to fifteen newspapermen and fifty others, including relatives of the accused.
Strong detachments of foot and mounted police formed a cordon around the building in which the trial is being held. Dozens of policemen were posted inside the building as well. The public was permitted to enter freely, but no one was allowed on the second floor, where the trial is being held, without proper authorization.
STAVSKY’S MOTHER KISSES HIM
When the three accused men arrived in a prison van the crowdgathered outside cheered them vigorously. The Revisionists were cleanly shaven and neatly dressed. They acknowledged the cheers of the crowd and entered the courtroom smiling and joking. Stavsky’s mother ran up and kissed her son, wishing him a speedy acquittal. None of the accused seemed to have changed in appearance during the lengthy imprisonment and hearing.
A representative of the Polish Consulate in Jerusalem was present in an official capacity, since Stavsky is a Polish citizen.
As is customary in cases involving Jews, the official language used during the trial was to have been Hebrew and the morning session today was opened in Hebrew. However, following a plea by Horace Samuel, London attorney conducting the defense of the Revisionists, it was decided that Yiddish was to be the official language of the trial. Samuel explained that two of the men, Stavsky and Rosenblatt, did not understand Hebrew.
After the lengthy charges were read to the accused in Yiddish, defense counsel Samuel, however, announced that in order to save time the trial would proceed in Hebrew.
SAMUEL CHALLENGES
The fighting spirit which has made Samuel famous as an advocate was evidenced as soon as the trial was opened officially. He immediately proceeded to challenge the text of the official charges in which all three men were equally accusd of the murder.
Samuel demanded that Stavsky be disassociated from the murder, since the accusation against Stavsky stated that he flashed a light on Dr. Arlosoroff and therefore could not have committed the murder itself.
Samuel argued that Achimeier also was wrongly charged in the indictment since the text read, “he counselled and procured Dr. Arlosoroff’s murder”. The indictment was meaningless, Samuel declared, since it did not show exactly how Achimeier “counselled and proaccused of the murder.
As a result of the arguments of the defense counsel, the court modified the indictment but included in the charges a speech delivered by Achimeier at Haifa and an article of his which was published in Hazit Haam, Revisicnist newspaper, both of which allegedly called for terror.
Most of the morning session was devoted to a two hour review of the case by the Palestine Attorney General, Harry Herbert Trusted, who is personally in charge of the prosecution. He stressed the political strife between the Revisionists and the Laborite Zionists as the direct cause of the murder.
PAPER CREATES SENSATION
A sensation was created in the courtroom among the spectators and at the press table when it became known that the Hebrew daily, Haaretz, regarded as the organ of the General Zionists and known to favor the present Laborite World Zionist Executive, had come out with an editorial expressing the hope that the fund which the Revisionists are now collecting for the defense of the Revisionists accused of the murder of Dr. Arlosoroff would be successful.
Dr. Arlosoroff, brilliant young head of the political department of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and leader of the Laborite faction, was shot and killed on June 16, 1933, as he and his wife were walking along the seashore near Tel Aviv.
Some time later the three Revisionists, all extremely active in the movement, were arrested and charged with the crime. An extremely long-drawn-out hearing. which closed several weeks ago, followed. Magistrate Bodily, who presided at the hearing, decided that there was sufficient cause to try the men for murder.
They were indicted for premeditated murder under Article 170 of the Ottoman Penal Code. The punishment for the crime is death.
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