Roy Farran Continued

Two interviews on CBC.

The Current for March 17, 2009
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It's Tuesday, March 17th.

Part One: Farran 1947 Murder: Rambam

When Roy Alexander Farran died two and a half years ago, he was remembered as a great -- even legendary -- man.

Roy Farran served as a commando with the British Special Air Service, the SAS during World War Two. He was highly decorated, he came to Canada in the 1950s and worked as a journalist. In the 1970s, he was elected to the Alberta legislature and served as Solicitor General under Premier Peter Lougheed.

But yesterday, at a press conference in Jerusalem, a private investigator named Steven Rambam painted a very different picture of the man many remember as a hero.

Back in 1947, Alexander Rubowitz was a 16-year-old boy living in what was then British-mandated Palestine. It's believed that he was part of the Zionist insurgency against British rule. And according to Steven Rambam, Roy Farran -- the man so many people came to revere -- was also the man who commanded a British police squad that tortured and murdered Alexander Rubowitz and then covered it up.

Stephen Rambam is a private investigator from Brooklyn. He was hired to investigate the disappearance of Alexander Rubowitz. He was in Jerusalem this morning.

We tried to get a comment from a member of Roy Farran's family. But we have been unsucessful so far.

Farran 1947 Murder: Charters

The allegations against Roy Farran stem from a complicated historical moment. David Charters has closely studied the final years of British mandated rule in Palestine. He's a professor of history at the University of New Brunswick and the author of The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1945 to 47. He's also the author of an article called "Special Operations in Counter-Insurgency: The Farran Case, Palestine 1947." David Charters was in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Here's the link, twent-on and a half minutes.


And this from the Jerusalem Post today:

ALTHOUGH THERE were witnesses to the murder, the perpetrator who had actually confessed was acquitted. Yet 62 years later, the body of the victim has not been recovered. A substantial reward for information leading to the recovery of the remains of the victim was offered this week by American private investigator Steven Rambam, whose Pallorium detective agency operates in New York, San Antonio, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Toronto and Jerusalem. Rambam has been retained to set the historical record straight, find the remains and bring about closure for members of the victim's family. Addressing a press conference at the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem this week, Rambam was not at liberty to disclose the name of his client, nor the actual sum of the reward.

The case involves the abduction and murder on May 6, 1947 of 16-year old Alexander Rubowitz, a member of the Lehi underground organization, who was captured by Roy Alexander Farran, who headed a special British Palestine police unit. Rubowitz was tortured and later killed by Farran, who smashed in his head with a rock. Farran filed a full report with his commanding officer, but the document in which he implicated himself has conveniently disappeared. Rambam presented a comprehensive report of his investigations and said that the case was still being investigated by the Israel authorities. Although Farran has since died after a long, diverse and successful career in Canada, at least five members of his squad are still living and should be tried for war crimes, said Rambam. While he believes that they can be forced to testify, he doubts that they would ever be brought to trial.

The most dramatic part of the press conference was when Rubowitz's commander Yael Ben Dov rose to speak, and related the story with a degree of passion and recall as if it had taken place only yesterday. After the arrest of Geula Cohen, who had been the Lehi broadcaster and head of Lehi's information effort, Lehi's only means of promoting its views was through posters and the distribution of leaflets. The British were always on the alert for poster people and had no compunction about shooting them. Thus distribution of leaflets and the pasting of posters was very dangerous. For all that, Rubowitz volunteered, and refused to heed warnings from his Lehi colleagues. He had a mission, and he intended to fulfill it. But the British had their eye on him and apprehended him in Jerusalem's Rehavia neighborhood, where he was so well known that witnesses to his abduction were able to identify him. Ben Dov recalled being told about the abduction by a group of children who had picked up a hat that had been knocked off the head of one of the members of the police squad in the struggle in which Rubowitz was forced into a car. Inside the hat's head band was Farran's name.

Rubowitz's three cousins want to give him a proper Jewish burial. Rambam thought that there was a 50/50 chance of recovering the remains by May 6 this year. There are leads, he said, but was either unwilling or unable to explain why the location, in which eye witnesses had seen the murder committed, was not excavated. Nor could he say whether it will be in the few weeks between now and May 6.