After five years of behind-the-scenes efforts to quash the case, a sensational libel trial involving some of West Germany’s outstanding diplomats is being heard openly before the State Court here today. The nub of the case consists of charges that the former head of the Economic Ministry’s Middle East department opposed the German-Israel Reparations Agreement of 1952, and allegedly accepted a bribe from the Egyptian Government.
On trial are Prof. Walter Hallstein, president of the European Common Market; Herbert Blankenhorn, West German Ambassador to France and to NATO; and this country’s former Ambassador to France, Baron Vollrath von Maltzen. Their accuser is the former Middle East expert of the Ministry of Economics, Dr. Hans Strack.
In the very first session of the trial, yesterday, Ambassador Blankenhorn admitted that he had passed on to his superior, seven years ago, a letter to Dr. Strack from the press attache of the Egyptian consulate-general in Frankfurt, which stated that Dr. Strack had accepted an Egyptian bribe. Mr. Blankenhorn’s superior at the time was another of the defendants, Prof. Hallstein, who, at the time, headed the German Foreign Ministry. Ambassador Blankenhorn testified that he passed on the letter as a matter of duty.
The case came to trial only after it had been aired in the lower house of the West German Parliament, the Bundestag. There, the opposition Social Democratic Party accused the Government of trying to quash the case, alleging that State Secretary Hans Globke had refused to permit certain government officials to appear as witnesses. In the course of the Bundestag debate, an admission was made by Heinrich von Brentano, the Foreign Minister, that he had offered Dr. Strack ambassadorships in Iraq or in Chile if the latter would withdraw his charges against the three defendants.
One of the three defendants. Baron von Maltzen, was excused by the court from attending the trial after physicians testified that he was too ill to come to court.
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