The trial of Sternist leader Nathan Friedman-Yellin in Acre reached its climax today when the prosecution charged that the Stern Group and the “Fatherland Front” are one and the same organization. The Fatherland Front claimed responsibility for the assassination of Count Bernadotte.
To prove his point, the prosecutor quoted from Sternist and Fatherland Front pamphlets which were published at the same time and which dealt with the same subjects. The leaflets, the prosecution maintained, used the same words.
The prosecutor then told the Acre military court, where Friedman-Yellin and his aide, M. Schmulevitz are being tried on charges of terrorism, that the Fatherland Front was created especially to carry out the murder of the late United Nations Palestine mediator, so as to remove all responsibility for the deed from the Sternists themselves.
Although conceding that the Fatherland Front was a terrorist group with ideas similar to those of the Stern Group, Friedman-Yellin asserted that this did not necessarily mean that the two groups were one and the same. The prosecution countered with the charge that the defendant had given freedom of action to the Fatherland Front insofar as fixing the exact date for the assassination of Bernadotte was concerned, but the Front assassins carried out the murder before the date originally set, thus making it impossible for Friedman-Yellin to leave the country in time.
During the last hour of the trial, the prosecutor accused the Stern Group of espionage and of communicating secret movements of the Israeli Army. Both Friedman-Yellin and his defense counsel asked the prosecutor not to use the term “spies” in his remarks. The prosecutor said that he would not make public certain secret documents in his possession unless all newspapermen left the courtroom.
For the first time since the trial began, all newsmen covering the proceedings were asked to leave the court chambers. The trial is now continuing behind closed doors.
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