Justice Department Keeps Watch on Arab Students Group As Sirhan Probe Continues

The Department of Justice said yesterday that it will remain alert to operations of the Organization of Arab students while the investigation of Sirhan Sirhan and all ramifications of the Robert F. Kennedy assassination is continuing. This disclosure was made by J. Walter Yeagley, Assistant Attorney-General, in a letter to Rep. Joel T. Broyhill, Virginia Republican. Mr. Broyhill had asked the department to investigate Arab extremist activities in this country and possible Communist links with them.

The department said that on the basis of information so far available to the Government, “it does not appear that the Organization of Arab Students has incurred an obligation to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act at this time. While the organization does receive some funds from officials of foreign governments, the amount is not sufficient to warrant a conclusion that it is acting within the United States at the direction or control of a foreign government so as to create the requisite agency relationship necessary to require registration.”

Arab-American businessmen in Los Angeles are spreading a story that Sirhan Sirhan, alleged assassin of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was “a secret agent ‘paid by the Zionists’ to blacken the name of the Arab world,” it was reported here today by the Washington Post.

In a related development, the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine, in Beirut, has instructed its New York office to offer “all possible assistance” to Sirhan. The committee’s spokesman, former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who visited Berlin during World War II and collaborated with Hitler, said it had instructed its New York representatives to legally defend Sirhan as far as United States law will permit. The committee is known in New York as the Palestine Arab Delegation. Its New York representatives are Issa Nakhleh and Omar Azzouni, both attorneys.