Court Sees TV Film Of Mosque Fire

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32118, 14 October 1969, Page 17

Court Sees TV Film Of Mosque Fire

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) JERUSALEM, October 13. The Australian shearer, Dennis Michael Rohan, aged 28, who is said to have been gripped by the influence of Satan when he set fire to the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem, watched, fascinated, today as a television film of the blaze was shown in court.

The film was submitted as evidence by the prosecution on the sixth day of Rohan’s trial. The prosecution is expected to finish its case today, and the defence may then ask for a recess to prepare its brief or for the accused to be examined by psychiatrists. The showing of the film today came after a week of evidence in which Rohan had been depicted as a malicious firebug, a lonely, rejected man, and a visionary. The prosecution says that

Rohan wilfully tried to burn down the mosque because he believed God had chosen him to rebuild Solomon’s Temple. Rohan’s defence lawyer (Mr Yitzhak Tunik), one of Israel’s best-known criminal lawyers, contends that the accused was not in full mental control of his actions, either when he set fire to the mosque on August 21 or during a previous unsuccessful attempt, on August 11. To support this submission, Mr Tunik is expected to sub-

mit documents from Australia, where Rohan was detained in a mental institution in 1965. Judicial sources believe he will also ask for a two-week recess for the accused to be examined by psychiatrists, hoping to save Rohan from a theoretical maximum prison sentence of 44 years on four charges of arson and violation of a holy place. Prison sentences in Israel do not, however, run to more than 20 years.