DRUG SMUGGLING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1938, Page 5

DRUG SMUGGLING

STARTLING DISCOVERIES IN PALESTINE EVIDENCE OF WIDESPREAD TRAFFIC. SOME INNOCENT PEOPLE MADE USE OF. By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. (Recd This Day, 9.45 a.m.) JERUSALEM, Aug. 5. Startling discoveries throughout Palestine, after the arrest of Isaac Leifer, are revealing that a large drug ring is operating in Europe, the United States and Asia. It is estimated that narcotics to a value of £lOO,OOO have already been smuggled into the United States. Scores of Palestine people have unwittingly helped the traffickers. The police allege that a wine trader, Rabbi Yomtovlotmik, was an unsuspecting tool and agreed to readdress books from Leifer, in Czechoslovakia, to America. Forty-five packages were seized in which heroin, valued’at £5,000, was discovered between book covers. A cablegram from Paris on July 30 read: Eight Lebanese have been arrested here and in Alexandretta and Beirut, in connection with the cleanup of drug traffiick'ers. Consignments of 901 b of hashish were seized at Alexandretta, hidden in merchandise. It is reported that the arrests are connected with the case of Isaac Leifer, the New York “rabbi,” who was arrested here last week and was alleged to have been carrying heroin secreted in a Bible.