Behind the Headlines Former British Counter-insurgency Fighter. Implicated in 1947 Murder of Stern G

Roy Farran, the subject of a bitter legal and political controversy in Palestine in 1947, is still active in journalism after a successful career of government service in the province of Alberta. In a recent article written for the Calgary Herald, Farran is shown holding a pipe, serene in contemplation of worldly matters.

There is a little hint in the photograph of the Roy Farran who, on February 12, 1947 was appointed by Assistant Inspector Bernard Fergusson to become a member of a crack British counter-insurgency force in Palestine.

The force was created in order to neutralize the activity of Jewish irregulars who had been making life so miserable for the British army that troops were besieged in their garrisons. Farran was chosen for the position because of his experience in fighting behind enemy lines in occupied France during World War II.

Quoted in Nicholas Bethell’s book, “The Palestine Triangle, ” Farran says: “Fergusson was right in the basic principle that an underground war can only be fought by counter-terrorist forces, who are prepared to mix with the enemy in his environment. Small groups can counter other small groups.”

The enemy to which Farran refers was, of course, members of the Irgun, the Lehi (Stern Group) and the Haganah.

DESCRIBED AS TRAINED GUERRILLA FIGHTER

Lord Bethell says in his study of the period that Farran, a young war hero “was a highly trained guerrilla fighter with years of experience in the utterly ruthless world of resistance to Nazi-German occupation. He was no politician then and he was not suited to play any important part in the sensitive balancing act of British policy in Palestine.”

In fact Farran severely disrupted the equilibrium that the British were trying to impose on Palestine when he was implicated in the murder of a young member of Lehi. Alexander Rubowitz was a 17-year-old who disappeared without a trace in 1947.

At the time the New York Herald Tribune alleged that Rubowitz had been kidnapped and tortured to death by a special British police squad.

When the British authorities turned to Farran for questioning he was nowhere to be found. He had left Palestine for Syria, where, according to Bethell, he was involved in conversations with Syrian leaders. Fergusson, his superior officer, went to Syria to persuade Farran to return to Palestine for interrogation.

PUT ON TRIAL FOR MURDER

Farran faced more than interrogation; he was put on trial for the murder of young Rubowitz. Despite the damning fact that Farran had left behind in his tent an exercise book which was described by the prosecution “as a full confession,” the court refused to admit the evidence because it deemed it subject to legal and professional privilege. The prosecution’s case was further weakened by Fergusson’s success in avoiding giving testimony of the grounds of possible self-incrimination.

The remaining circumstantial evidence (a hat bearing something resembling Farran’s name near the scene of the crime) was inadequate to secure a conviction and Farran was freed.

According to Bethell, Nathan Yalin-Mor, the head of the Stern Group, sent Farran a parcel bomb in England but it was Farran’s brother, Rex, who had the misfortune to open it. He died as a result.

In 1957, Bethell recounted, at a “bizarre conspiratorial meeting in Paris, Yalin-Mor told Fergusson: ‘Tell Farran that we are satisfied to have had our revenge in this way.'”

Farran made his way from England to Canada where by the 1960s he had received an important government post, eventually rising to the office of Solicitor General of the province of Alberta.

Farran is still active in journalism and it is instructive that this most recent article in the Calgary Herald on December 24 deals with the clandestine activities of the RCMP, Canada’s national police constabulary.