CAPTAIN FARRAN FREED

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25306, 4 October 1947, Page 9

CAPTAIN FARRAN FREED

“NO CASE TO ANSWER” CHARGE OF MURDERING JEWISH YOUTH (Rec. 8 p.m.) JERUSALEM, Oct. 2. A court-martial found that Captain Roy Farran, former Assistant-Super-intendent of the Palestine Police, who pleaded not guilty to a charge of murdering Alexander Rubowitz, a Jew aged 16, on the night of May 6, had no case to answer, and freed him. Rubowitz was in Jerusalem on the night of May 6. He was then seen being driven away m a car containing three other men.

The court, in acquitting Captain Farran, upheld the defence submission that there was no case to answer without a body or part of a body—a submission to which the prosecution had earlier agreed. Captain Farran’s counsel had told the court that for 200 years in Britain no accused had ever been convicted of murder ot manslaughter in the absence of a body. Shouts of “Good show*’ and a storm of handclapping fronp police in the public benches greeted Captain Farran’s acquittal. Both Captain Farran and Colonel Fergusson. his immediate superior, are ■being strongly guarded. The Stern Gang has threatened to “get at them.’* Army officers connected with the preparation of the prosecution’s case said after the trial that even if Colonel Fergusson had agreed to disclose the conversation he had had with Captain Farran on May 7 after the disappearance of Rubowitz, there would still have been nothing save circumstantial and hearsay evidence against Farran. Refusal to Give Evidence

Colonel Fergusson, on the first day of the trial, refused to give evidence about this conversation, because he said that doing so might lead him into the danger of being prosecuted. The military and legal authorities had guaranteed that Colonel Fergusson was not due to be prosecuted as an accessory, but he continued to refuse to give evidence. Colonel Fergusson is Assistant-Inspeetor-General of the Palestine Police, and during the war he was a brigadier in Major-General Orde Wingate’s Burma . force. He admitted that Captain Farran had had a conversation with him after the disappearance of Rubowitz, but he refused to give details on the grounds that he might incriminate himself. . The judge advocate-general ruled that under English law Colonel Fergusson was not bound to answer, and the president of the court told him that he was free to withdraw.

Colohel Fergusson informed the Jerusalem correspondent of “The Times” that he sent in his resignation from the Palestine Polite in June 4 and that he will leave Palestine shortly to revert to the Army, after taking leave. The correspondent adds that members of the anti-terrorist unit in which Captain Farran operated will probably return to Britain as their unit has been disbanded. The unit had some success in 1 tracking down terrorists.

The prosecutor, judge-advocate and defence counsel at Captain Farran’s court-martial went to the Lydda airport under heavy escort, and boarded an aircraft for London.