A court in Mainz, West Germany, has ordered a state government to pay full costs of returning to Germany three Arabs who were expelled following the slayings of Israeli athletes in Munich Sept. 5, it was reported this weekend. Some observers saw this order as setting a precedent for some 100 Arabs who were expelled last Sept.
The three Arab students at Mainz University who were expelled, denied at the time that they were members of the Palestinian Students’ Organization or the Palestinian Workers’ Organization, two groups which later were banned in West Germany but which at the time of their expulsion were still legal.
The three-judge court said that in their opinion, police had offered no proof to support their charges that the men had endangered public security. In ordering the state of Rhineland-Palatinate to pay the costs of returning the three men to Germany, the court did not rule on the question of whether they constituted a threat to the security of the state.
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