第3巻第2章 国の内外で
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v.3,chap.2: At home and abroad At the time of the Rosenbergs' trial and death (one is tempted to say assassination) in 1951, I had paid, I am ashamed to say, only cursory attention to what was going on. Now, in 1956, in March, my cousin Margaret Lloyd brought Mrs Sobell, Morton Sobell's mother, to see me. Sobell had been kidnapped by the United States Government from Mexico to be brought to trial in connection with the Rosenberg case. He had been condemned, on the evidence of a known perjurer, to thirty years' imprisonment, of which he had already served five. His family was trying to obtain support for him, and his mother had come to England for help. Several eminent people in America had already taken up cudgels on his behalf, but to no avail. People both here and in the United States appeared to be ignorant of his plight and what had led up to it. I remember talking of the case with a well-known and much admired Federal Court Judge. He professed complete ignorance of the case of Morton Sobell and was profoundly shocked by what I told him of it. But I noted that he afterwards made no effort to get at the facts, much less to do anything to remedy them. The case seemed to me a monstrous one and I agreed to do all I could to call people's attention to it. A small society had already been formed in London to do this, and they agreed to help me. I wrote letters to the papers and articles on the matter. One of my letters contained the phrase 'a posse of terrified perjurers', which pleased me and annoyed those who did not agree with me. I was inundated by angry letters from Americans and others denying my charges and asking irately how I could be so bold as to call American justice into question. A few letters came from people, including members of the above mentioned London group, who agreed with me, though no one in England, so far as I know, upheld my point of view publicly. I was generally and often venomously charged with being anti-American, as I often have been when I have criticised adversely any Americans or anything American. I do not know why, since I have spent long periods in that country and have many friends there and have often expressed my admiration of various Americans and American doings. Moreover, I have married two Americans. However - ten years later it had come to be generally agreed that the case against Morton Sobell did not hold water. The Court of Appeals pronounced publicly on the case in 1962-63. On reading the judges' verdict, I understood them to say that it was not worth granting Sobell a new trial. On appealing for advice from Sobell's defence lawyers on my interpretation of the verdict, I was informed: 'It was terrible, though not quite as crude as you'd imagined.' The defence lawyers had argued that 'Ethel Rosenberg's constitutional Fifth-Amendment rights had been violated during the trial, and that this had been fully established in a subsequent Supreme Court decision, known as the 'Grunewald' decision. This decision indicated that Ethel Rosenberg had been entitled to a new trial; and since her innocence would have established her husband's and Sobell's, they too were entitled to new trials ... The Rosenbergs, alas, were no longer around, but Sobell should have his day in court.' Although his family continue their long, brave fight to obtain freedom for him, Morton Sobell remains in prison. |