Acre Justice

Before dawn one morning last week at Nablus a detachment of native policemen and soldiers, led by British Assistant District Commissioner W. Foote, moved off into the hills of northern Palestine. Their destination was the tiny Arab village of Mazar. With the squad moved armored cars. As they crept up on the village in the grey morning light, two British planes droned overhead. The Arabs scrambled from their houses to find their village surrounded.

Striding forward, Commissioner Foote threatened to wipe out the entire settlement unless the Arab villagers produced and delivered to the British the aged Sheik Farhan al Sadi. After this 75-year-old Arab dignitary had been told of the British ultimatum, he crawled out of a wheat bin, gave himself up.

Two days later the Sheik was accused of "possessing arms"--something every Arab sheik possesses--advised that if convicted under Britain's new emergency decree in Palestine the penalty would be Death. Arraigned before a court martial of three British officers, the Sheik Farhan refused to utter a word to the Court, kept repeating to himself passages from the Koran. His lawyer entered a plea of "not guilty," the court sentenced him to Death, and on the sixth morning after he crawled out of the wheat bin Sheik Farhan al Sadi was hanged by the neck until dead at Acre.

While Arab public opinion was horrified. British public opinion approved, for several reasons. British authorities in Palestine say that the Sheik Farhan was a leader of terrorist activities against such few Arab bigwigs as are known to be friendly to the British, or at least willing to negotiate. The British say that among the "arms" which Sheik Farhan was found to "possess" was one engraved with the name of a recently-assassinated pro-British Arab leader, Radi Abboushi. Such suspicions and circumstantial evidence might not hang a man in England, but the Near East is the Near East.

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