Arlington County’s chief prosecutor, Commonwealth Attorney William J. Hassan, this weekend rejected an appeal by leading citizens of the three major faiths to designate George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party headquarters here as a public nuisance.
The civic group, known as “Citizens Concerned,” submitted data showing that the Nazi headquarters here was the base of 26 crimes in the last two years and constitutes a public nuisance of a nature prohibited under Virginia law: six of the Nazi crimes, including assaults and statutory rape, took place on the premises of the headquarters.
In refusing to take action against the Nazi headquarters, the Commonwealth Attorney maintained that the State had no legal grounds on which to proceed. He said the evidence was inadequate to obtain a public nuisance finding, and that he had sought unsuccessfully three years ago to get a similar conviction. Leading citizens, however, pointed out that criminal convictions subsequent to the earlier public nuisance issue made the charge clearly applicable today.
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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.
