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Protests Continue Mounting in Europe, Hangings Denounced

February 4, 1969
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Protests continued to mount against the Iraqi hangings today along with appeals by Jewish leaders and others for the intervention by governments and other groups with moral authority to prevent further executions.

In Geneva today, Chief Rabbi Alexander Safran asked the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Council of Churches to intercede on behalf of Iraqi Jews whose lives are threatened. Demands for international intervention to forestall new secret trials and hangings were made at public meetings in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and other major South African cities.

In Rome, the Communist Party newspaper Unita published a letter from Umberto Terracini, a Jewish Communist Senator, denouncing the Baghdad hangings of 14 men–including nine Jews–as “barbarous, premeditated massacre.” Sen. Terracini, a member of the International Association of Democratic Jurists, demanded that trials everywhere be held in public so that the rights of defendants are assured.

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