The ex-Mufti of Jerusalem is not under house arrest and is “free to come and go as he wishes,” a French foreign office spokesman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today.
He said that the Mufti had never asked the French Government to send him back to Palestine, or any other place in the Arab world, and he denied that the Arab League has demanded his release.
(A Reuter dispatch from Paris quotes the foreign office spokesman as stating that if any Arab state was willing to accept the Mufti, France would place no obstacles in the way of his departure.)
The Quai D’Orsay spokesman denied that Britain had formally requested the Mufti’s extradition, but admitted that the British had “asked” that he be turned over to them. The official said no nation or group had asked for the Mufti, with the exception of Yugoslavia, which formally requested last year that the Arab leader be turned over to it, but later withdrew its request. Zionist groups, he added, charge that the Mufti is responsible for anti-Jewish outrages and should be tried as a war criminal.
(The Paris correspondent of the British Broadcasting Company, Thomas Cadet, in a broadcast in London today, said that Britain had informed France that it did not consider the Mufti a war criminal, but rather a “quisling.”)
According to French officials, the Mufti is quite happy in France, sees a constant stream of visitors, and is “looking over the situation in Palestine before deciding what to do.”
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