The Israel Supreme Court turned down an appeal today of three men sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination of Dr. Israel Kastner.
Two of the defendants, Zvi Eckstein who was convicted of having fired the shots which killed Dr. Kastner, and Dan Shemer, convicted of having supplied the murder weapon, held that the prosecution had never proven that the bullets taken from the dead man’s body actually were fired by the gun. The third, defendant, Yosef Menkes, was convicted of complicity in the crime.
Immediately after the defendants pleas were turned down, State’s Attorney Mrs. Miriam Ben Porath filed an appeal against the lower court’s refusal to consider charges that the defendants were members of an underground group and that Menkes was one of its leaders. Mrs. Ben Porath is attempting to establish the existence of such an underground in order to prosecute others allegedly implicated in the assassination plot.
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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.
