APPEAL BY GRUNER

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 February 1947, Page 5

APPEAL BY GRUNER

Application To Privy ' Council ACCEPTANCE OF SERVICE (Rccd. 11 a.m.) LONDON, February 7. The Colonial Office has instructed its London solicitors to accept service of proceedings for an appeal to the Privy Council on behalf of Dov Gruner. The appeal is being made in unusual circumstances. Gruner himself first agreed and then refused to sign the appeal. Next his uncle, Frank Gruner appealed to the Palestine High Court, alleging procedural irregularities in the trial of Gruner. The High Court refused the application and then refused another application for leave to appeal to the Privy Council on the ground that the Palestine court had no power in such a matter. Frank Gruner has now appealed direct to the Privy Council and the Colonial Office has accepted service of the proceedings. Gruner’s solicitors, have briefed Frank Devlin, K.C. The petition is expected to be lodged with the Privy Council on February 8. Gruner’s solicitors have cabled the Palestine Government and the Palestine Commissioner of Prisons informing them of the action taken in London.

The evacuation of British women and children, and also non-essential civilians from Palestine is now completed officially. It is stated that a total of 1396 families and Army personnel have been moved from Palestine to Egypt. The Exchange Telegraph’s Jerusalem correspondent says parties of young Jews left Jerusalem secretly at midnight and by dawn had erected barbed-wire barricade and watchtowers around the sites of three new settlements they propose to build in the desert in the Negeb area of southern Palestine. Arab quarters in Jerusalem say that the leaders of the Najada and the chiefs of the Moslem Youth Brother-

hood (a militant organisation) will meet in Cairo on February 22, when the Grand Mufti will issue a declaration of policy on Palestine and the developments arising out of the London talks. Similar meetings of Arab representatives in other countries will follow the Cairo conference. The first of the British women and children evacuated by air from Palestine'arrived at Victoria Station this evening in the Golden Arrow train from Paris. Members of the Women’s Voluntary Service who welcomed them had booked accommodation at Kensington hotels and arranged hot meals and hot milk for the children, and even hot water bottles in the evacuees’ beds.