The appeal of a number of Palestine Arabs who had been sentenced to death in cases arising from the murder of Jews during last Summer’s riots, was rejected yesterday by the judicial committee of the Privy Council, the highest legal tribunal in the British Empire. Counsel for the Arabs argued that the Palestine courts had not given due consideration to the Ottoman penal code which should have been applied in these cases.
Lords Dunedin, Thankerton and Mac-Millan, who comprised the committee that dismissed the appeals, pointed out that the appeals were brought not from the decision of the trial judge, but from the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals, which had heard all the arguments about the interpretation of the Ottoman penal code and the criminal ordinance. Acting as spokesman for the committee, Lord Dunedin said, “we cannot give the leave asked for without infringing principles relating to appeals which have regulated our practice for many years.”
The counsel for the appellants had argued that the difference in Ottoman law between murder with premeditation and willful killing was quite distinct from that in the English law code between murder and manslaughter. He said that many acts that would be considered murder in English law would not be murder with premeditation in Ottoman law.
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