Reports from Amsterdam that Alexander Aharonson is alive, contrary to an Iraqi news agency announcement last Wednesday that the Dutch Jew was hanged in Baghdad as an Israeli spy, has raised the hopes of his family in Holland and relatives and friends in this country. But they are awaiting the Iraqi authorities’ response to the demand by the Dutch Ambassador in Baghdad for a meeting with Aharonson.
The Netherlands Foreign Ministry lodged a stiff protest with Iraq following the announcement of the hanging and summoned the Iraqi Ambassador to the Benelux countries to The Hague for an accounting.
On Thursday, however, the Iraqi Charge d’Affairs in The Hague, Sayid Ali Khadi, informed the Foreign Ministry there that he had received a cable from Baghdad saying that Aharonson was detained as a “Zionist spy” but had not been executed. The Iraqi Ambassador was reportedly indignant that the Dutch authorities called him to their capital instead of making telephone inquiries in the case.
Aharonson, a male nurse who survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a child, was providing medical assistance to Kurds in northern Iraq when he was arrested by Iraqi police last March. 24, According to the Iraqi news agency report, he was tried by a revolutionary tribunal last month and sentenced to death for allegedly gathering intelligence for Israel.
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