U.S. Attorney Robert Fisk has announced the arrest of four members of the Jewish Defense League on charges of harassing Soviet and Iraqi diplomats in New York. The arrests were made in New York today after the charges were returned by a federal grand jury.
One of those arrested was Russell Kelner, 35, of Brooklyn, N.Y., a former top official of the JDL. The others were identified as Thomas MacIntosh, 36, of New Jersey; Steven Ehrlich, 21, of San Francisco, and Jeffrey Weingarten, of Brooklyn.
The grand jury indictment said the four were involved in a shooting incident at the Soviet Mission to the United Nations on April 2 and a similar incident at the Soviet residential complex on Long Island. They were also charged with attempting to detonate a pipe bomb at the Iraqi Mission to the UN on Jan. 12 and the pipe bombing of a gas station in New Jersey a year ago. The four were charged with conspiracy; interstate transportation of firearms and explosives; and violations of laws protecting foreign officials, official guests of the U.S. and their property.
Ehrlich and MacIntosh were among three persons arrested by the FBI last June after they were alleged to have crossed into Staten Island over the Goethals Bridge from New Jersey in a car which the FBI said contained explosive material. The JDL at the time said that MacIntosh, who was charged with supplying the explosives to Ehrlich and a 17-year-old juvenile, was a convert to Judaism.
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.
