The Detroit Tribune

Group Questions Law Violations In Bus Riot

NEW YORK, - Federal law may have been violated in the attacks on busses carrying "Freedom Riders" testing Southern segregation laws. It was reported by the American Jewish Congress.

The Jewish group sent a telegram to Attorney General Robert Kennedy urging that the Department of Justice probe the ambush of two busses in Anniston and Birmingham, Ala., carrying members of the Congress of Racial Equality on a swing through the Deep South.

The telegram, signed by Shad Polier, chairman of the Commission on Law and Social Action of the American Jewish Congress, asked Mr. Kennedy to make a "full investigation" of the possibility that the bus attacks may have violated volume eighteen, section thirty-three of the United States Code.

The little-known Federal law, enacted July 14, 1956, says in part:

"Whoever willfully, with intent to endanger the safety of any person on board . . . or with a reckless disregard for the safety of human life, damages, disables or destroys .. . any motor vehicle which is used, operated or employed in interstate or foreign commerce .. . shall be fined not more than ten thousand dollars or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both."

In urging Attorney General Kennedy to investigate the "disgraceful attacks" for possible violation of the U. S. code. the American Jewish Congress declared: "No claim of 'states' rights' can alter the responsibility of the Federal government to enforce Federal law and to see that violators are prosecuted and punished in accordance with its terms."