The captain of the Greek ship Demetrios and five of his crew were acquitted yesterday in district court here on charges of “aiding and abetting persons to enter Palestine illegally.” They were immediately re-arrested, however, by British police acting under recently enacted “emergency defense regulations.” When their attorney protested to the court, the judge said that he could not intervene, because once he had rendered his decision, “my job is finished.”
The Demetrios was intercepted by a British naval patrol on Nov. 23, after, it was charged, some 200 “illegal” Jewish immigrants had disembarked from it, and disappeared into nearby Jewish settlements.
During a three-day trial the prosecution failed to prove that a number of persons arrested on board the ship were “illegal immigrants” and, as the ship was intercepted inside territorial waters, the-ship’s company could not be charged with aiding persons to enter Palestine.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
