UNDER DURESS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 110, 22 February 1950, Page 5

UNDER DURESS

CONFESSION 01'/ SANDERS

BRITAIN PROTESTS (N.Z.P. A.—Copyright) (Rec. 10.0) LONDON, Feb. 21. The British Government declared tc?night that the confession of Edgar Sanders, the British businessman sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment in Budapest, had been the result of “a sinister technique of interrogation under pressure.”

■ Sanders was sentenced on charges of espionage and sabotage, to which he had pleaded guilty. His American associate, Robert Vogeler, was sent to gaol for 15 years. Two Hungarians were sentenced to death and three others, on a woinan, to sentences ranging from five to ten years. Sanders and Vogeler have a right to appeal.

«. This is the first sentence ever passed on an American citizen in Hungary. A British Foreign Office statement issued to-night said: “Facts within the knowledge of the British Government make it clear that Sanders’ testimony was a compendium of distortions and lies, such as he could have no natural motive for uttering in court.” The British Government found Sander’s choice of words in court “unusual to him,” and said they “left no room for doubt about the nature of the preparations to which he had been previously subjected.”

Sanders “Conditioned”

The Foreign Office said that the Hungarians did hot dare to let any British official see Sanders lest he should discover how Sanders had been “conditioned.” Earlier to-day, a Foreign Office spokesman, commenting on Sanders’ sentence, said it was not surprising that no British lawyer had been allowed to prepare Sanders’ defence, when the Hungarian Government had already arranged for him to denounce himself in the extraordinary way he did. The spokesman said that Sanders had worked for a combined services detailed interrogation centre, an intelligence organisation, during the war. He had, in fact, acquired information of a military nature during the Hungarian armistice regime. The British Government was fully entitled to have that information. Sanders had worked with the full knowledge of the Soviet authorities. The spokesman asked why Sanders should have dressed up' these normal, and in no way sinster, activities. It could only be speculated that he had done this, to his own disadvantage, under threats or pressure. In Budapest to-day, the president of the court announced the sentences on Vogeler, Sanders and the five Hungarians, “in the name of the Hungarian People's Republic.”' He then read a long document giving.the reasons for the verdicts.

“Groundwork for War” The president said that the guilt of the accused had-been proved-beyond doubt by their own testimony, documentary evidence and the witnesses. Ho said it was clear that accused s real bosses were the joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, who were ‘ prerj&ring to hurl the world into a new war." “Accused had been part of the machine to lay the groundwork for this war. They had committed espionage against Hungary, and impeded Hungarian reconstruction and Hungary’s foreign trade relations with eastern European- countries and the Soviet Union. The court ordered confiscation of Sanders’ and Vogelers property in Hungary, and their expulsion after finishing their sentences. The judge said that" the sentences on Geiger, Rado and Yogeler were the most severe, because it was proved they had received the intelligence they had given to Americans, from civil servants. This was not proved in Sanders’ case and he had been given a lighter sentence, having been found guilty of a lesser degree of espionage. The prosecutor told the judge that he accepted the sentences against Geiger and' Rado, but felt that the other sentences, including those against Vogeler and Sanders, were not severe enough. , All accused have lodged appeals which will be referred to the Supreme Court.