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Army Officer Implicated in Smuggling Trial

June 18, 1939
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A British army officer and a number of subordinate police officials were revealed today to have been involved in an alleged conspiracy to smuggle Zionist-Revisionists into Palestine.

Testifying at this morning’s session of the trial of British Police Inspector Harry Goddard on immigrant smuggling charges, Inspector Henry Mansfield said that, acting upon orders by Walter Gilpin, chief of the Criminal Investigation Department for the Jaffa-Tel Aviv district, he had eavesdropped on a conversation between Gilpin and Goddard.

The witness said Goddard had told Gilpin, who had tricked the defendant into including him in the conspiracy, that several of his subordinates and an Army officer at Nathania were involved in the immigration racket. The officer, Goddard allegedly declared, was the link to Max Seligman, lawyer who is to be tried separately on the conspiracy charges, and operated on a retainer of $5,000 yearly from the Revisionists.

In the course of his testimony, Inspector Mansfield referred to police rackets including the smuggling and sale of firearms and Hasheesh.

Meanwhile, violence continued unchecked in parts of Palestine. An official communique said that two unidentified Jews had shot an Arab dead near Petach Tikva.

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