PROTESTS BY WEST

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28270, 7 May 1957, Page 7

PROTESTS BY WEST

Detention Of Diplomats (KZ. Press Association Copyright) PRAGUE, May 5. The British Embassy at Prague said today that Czech Army photographers had taken pictures of two detained Western attaches against an intentionally misleading background. The British and United States Embassies have protested in Notes to the Czechoslovak authorities about the holding up of a car in which the British and American Air Attaches were travelling on Friday near Prague. The Attache* Colonel Daniel E Teberg. United States Air Force, and Group Captain Cedric Masterman. R.A.F., were held up in a country lane near Prague while driving in a Diplomatic Corps car. The Western Notes said that a Czechoslovak military policeman had directed tl»e tw’o attaches off the main road to the site of their detention. Two twin-engined jet aircraft of an older type and two tanks were towed up close to the attaches’ car so that army photographers could, according to the American Note, take “contrived and misleading” photographs. The United States Note said that after turning off the main road in compliance with police instructions. the two diplomats were intercepted and passage backwards and forwards was blocked by Czech Army vehicles which appeared from both directions. Six armed guards surrounded the vehicle. Czechoslovak civilian vehicles continued to use the road during the three-hour detention. Later the attaches were led back to the main road to have pointed out resting on the fork of a tree, a small and partially defaced “no entry” sign in Czechoslovak, somewhat obscured by foliage. A similar British Note said the attaches’ car was photographed byCzech photographers against “a most studiously arranged background.” The British Military Attache (Colonel J. L. Nicholls) and his wife were involved in an incident with Czechoslovak police last Thursday. Diplomatic sources said that Colonel and Mrs Nicholls were returning from an Embassy party when plain-clothed police, who had shadowed them in a car for several days, forced them into the kerb. A security official leapt out to shout abuse at them angrily. Several British diplomats "have complained of close shadowing by security police in the last week for the first time since the antiWestern feeling in Czechoslovakia that came after the outbreak of fighting last October in Hungary. Pipe Organ in Home A Sydney suburban resident. Wr Penn Hughes, is going in for music in a big way. He is installing a 754-pipe theatre organ from Dimedin in bis six-roomed home at Bexley. Two rooms are being given over completely to the organ, which weighs about 38 tons. Mr Hughes told the Sydney "Sun-Herald” he bought the organ in Dunedin for £BOO By the time he got it to Sydney it usd cost him £lO5O. including sales tax. “If I bought this organ at a factory in Britain it would cost me more than £20.000.” he said. The organ is equipped to make the sound of a pistol shot, s nren. wind. surf, police whistle, fiass crash, klaxon horn, train whistle, cheers, a kiss, a whistle and public applause.—Sydney. May 5.