Moshe Douek, acting as his own defense attorney at the opening of a hearing today on charges he threw the hand grenade in the Knesset which wounded Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and four other Cabinet Ministers, began what appeared to be a retraction of his confession.
After replying to the court that he understood the charge, that he had thrown a bomb into a public place with intent to cause grievous harm to persons, he cross-examined state witnesses closely.
The apparent defense of the 25-year-old immigrant from Iraq, who has a record of mental illness, took two lines. He sought, first, to create doubt of eyewitness testimony that he was the grenade-thrower, rather than one of the visitors in the gallery who fled when the bomb exploded. His second effort was to establish that some eyewitnesses were able to deflect the hurling of the missile when they saw a furtive movement of “some other person.”
The defendant appeared entirely unruffled when witnesses pointed to him as the actual thrower of the grenade and he calmly took notes for cross-examination which he conducted without the aid of counsel. In excellent Hebrew, he once challenged a witness with a warning that “I do not say you lie but this is an important point which I wish you would be most accurate about.”
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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.
