Swiss authorities disclosed today that the arrest of an Israeli and an Austrian here for allegedly “threatening” a German scientist working in Egypt on a program of producing rockets, missiles and non-conventional weapons, was carried out by the Swiss police at the specific request of the public prosecutor of Freiburg, West Germany and the German police. The two will be tried before a court here for “illegal activities on behalf of a foreign state.”
The identity of the arrested Israeli was revealed here today at a press conference by the State Prosecutor of Basle Walter Burkhard. He said the Israeli was a man named Joseph Bengal, 33, who traveled to Switzerland on a “service” passport from Israel. Dr. Burkhard claimed Bengal was an official of the Israeli Ministry for Education and Culture. The arrested Austrian is Professor Otto Jukelik.
Both Bengal and Jukelik were arrested March 2 in Basle after, according to Swiss police, they met Miss Heidi Georke to try to “coerce” her into influencing her father, Prof. Jens Goerke, into halting work on the Egyptian missile program. A group of West German scientists are working in Egypt on weapons forbidden by international law. Swiss police also claimed that Miss Goerke and her family were threatened by the two “Israeli agents.”
Dr. Burkhard denied a Tel Aviv report to the effect that Miss Goerke had “provoked” the two arrested men. He said the claim was groundless. “We didn’t like to do what we are doing,” the state prosecutor said at the press conference, “and in particular we don’t like that it should be thought that whatever we do may help the Egyptians and the German Nazis now working for them. But we are under a legal obligation to act as we have acted. This is a matter of basic principle for us.”
WOMAN WHO CAUSED THE ARREST IS NOW IN EGYPT, PROSECUTOR REVEALS
The Swiss prosecutor told the newsmen at the press conference that only Bengal had threatened Heidi Goerke and that he was also in possession of a gun. He also asserted that Prof. Jukelik had been known to be in the vicinity of two German scientists who previously had been involved in similar incidents. They were a Dr. Kleinwachter whose kidnaping was attempted in February and Prof. Heinz Krug whose disappearance was reported last September and who was “presumably kidnaped,” Dr. Burkhard said.
He added that no Germans assisted in the arrest of the two men nor had the Basle police felt they were needed nor had they asked for any help from West German authorities. He also said that the charges against the two arrested men were based on witnesses who came not only from the Goerke family. He said there were no microphones put in the room in the Zurich hotel occupied by the two men.
The state prosecutor also confirmed reports that Heidi Goerke was now in Egypt. Asked by newsmen why she had not been kept in West Germany to cooperate with the police, the prosecutor replied that “miss Goerke was afraid and we could not prevent her from seeking what she thought would be safety in asylum, together with her family, in the United Arab Republic.”
ISRAEL AMBASSADOR VISITS THE ARRESTED ISRAELI IN SWISS PRISON
Shmuel Bentzur, the Israeli Ambassador in Switzerland, visited Bengal in the prison in Lornhof this morning where the two men were being held. After his visit, which was Bengal’s first contact with anyone but his captors, the envoy conferred with Dr. Wieland, the Basle Attorney General.
The envoy told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he had found Bengal looking fit and in good health. He said Bengal had informed him that he had not been “maltreated in any way whatever” and that he had been “properly treated” by the Swiss authorities.
(From Frankfurt, it was reported that reaction in West Germany to news of the arrests in Switzerland of Bengal and Jukelik had been limited so far to straight reporting of the somewhat vague and confused news. The reported actions of the two men were described here as an attempt to exercise “undue influence” on German citizens.)
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