Foreign News: For Killing a King

Dr. Musa el Husseini, cousin of Jerusalem’s exiled Mufti and Ph.D. of London and Berlin universities, lay in his Amman prison cell one night last week and talked about going to Argentina to become a farmer. He could not believe that Jordan would hang him and three others for plotting the murder of King Abdullah. For days telegrams had been pouring into Amman pleading and warning against carrying out the sentence of the military court.

But on the appointed morning, Dr. el Husseini walked to the gallows. He was followed by the other condemned men—a cattle merchant, a coffee-house keeper, a butcher.

Britain, whose subsidies support Jordan’s tough little Arab Legion, made a show of force by going through with the executions. But the tough Briton who runs the Legion was nervous. Glubb Pasha’s house was surrounded by half a platoon of armed legionnaires; barbed wire masked the entrance to his office; squads with Tommy guns convoyed his car. For still at large were the masterminds: Abdullah el Tel, former Arab Legion colonel (sentenced to death in absentia for the Abdullah killing), and Jerusalem’s Mufti, the greatest plotter of them all.