Knesset Gets Amendments to Capital Crimes Law; Related to Eichmann

A revision of Israel’s capital crimes law, containing five provisions specifically related to the forthcoming trial of former Gestapo Col. Adolf Eichmann, was submitted to the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, by Minister of Justice Pinhas Rosen today.

One of the provisions is that the defendant need not give evidence from the witness box but may testify from the dock. This clause was designed to end the possibility that the executioner of Hitler’s plan to exterminate the 6,000,000 European Jews could be removed during the trial proceedings to the witness stand from the heavily guarded dock which will be protected by splinter-proof glass.

Another provision will permit the prosecution to present testimony and evidence even if Eichmann pleads guilty at the beginning of the trial, slated to start March 15. This clause was designed to scotch any defense effort to defeat the Israel Government’s declared purpose of exposing the enormity of the Nazi crimes against the Jewish people and to place the trial in a proper historical perspective.

A third provision would make it impossible for any other party to enter the case on the ground of civil claims. One general aspect of the bill which is not related only to the Eichmann trial is that it makes capital crimes punishable by death. Another is that a court in such cases will be composed of a Supreme Court Judge as president serving with two district court judges.

The Justice Minister also said that the Government would submit another amendment to abolish in capital cases the present right of injured persons to join the state prosecution and to claim damages in the same suit. He said that in capital cases, it would be preferable that damage suits be separate actions.

In presenting the amendment, the Justice Minister said that it was important that the president of a court trying a capital offense case should be a Supreme Court Justice “since human life is at stake.” He added that “no one can contend that to entrust the conduct of the Eichmann trial to a Justice of the Supreme Court would injure the rights of the accused.”

The statement was understood to be an indirect comment on press reports that one of the purposes of that amendment was to prevent Judge Benjamin Halevi, the president of the Jerusalem District Court, from presiding by self-appointment at the Eichmann trial. Judge Halevi, who presided at the Kastner and Kafr Kassem trials, is regarded as a somewhat emotional jurist.