The jury trial of Jewish Defense League members charged with firebombing impressario Sol Hurok’s office last year opened yesterday with federal prosecutor Assistant U.S, Attorney Joseph Jaffee declaring that this was “a murder case.” and defense attorney Barry Slotnick charging that the government’s case is built around “suspicion, surmise and guesswork.”
The two JDLers on trial at the federal court house here are Stuart Cohen and-Sheldon Davis. The government is charging that the bombs, which were set off almost simultaneously on Jan. 26, 1972, in Hurok’s office. 1370 Sixth Av.. and Columbia Artists Management, Inc., 165 W. 57th St., to protest U.S. Soviet cultural exchanges because of the USSR’s treatment of Soviet Jews, resulted in the death of a secretary and injury to 13 others, including Hurok.
Asst. U.S. Attorney Henry Putzell, who is prosecuting the case with Jaffee, told U.S. District Judge Arnold Bauman that the government intended to call Sheldon Segal, one of the defendants in the case, as its first witness today.
Segal, whose case was severed from the other defendants, was to have provided key testimony against his former associates. But he is now balking at testifying for the government. Putzell said he would be granted immunity to force him to testify.
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