SCENE IN A RUSSIAN COURT.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1305, 25 May 1878, Page 3

SCENE IN A RUSSIAN COURT.

The Yiemm “ Tagblatt” states that in the course of the trial of the Nihilists at St. Petersburg, an extraordinary scene recently occurred in the court. One of the most prominent amongst the accused, a man named Mischkin, complained in his defence of the merciless ill-usage and torture to which he had been forced to submit during his two years’ detention. According to his statement, of the 180 prisoners, during the prolonged examination forty-three had died from natural causes, twelve had committed suicide, and twenty-eight had gone mad. A controversy then arose between the judge and the accused, during which the latter stigmatised the proceedings as being unworthy of the name of justice, and merely a miserable farce, these words the judge jumped up, and gave orders that the prisoner should be at once removed. An officer of the gendarmes promptly seized Mischkin, but at the same time two other priaonora rushed to the aid of the latter, and a hand-to-hand fight ensued, in which the oflicer had to contend against the three, and at the same time to endeavor to prevent Mischkin from speaking further. In this, however, he was unsuccessful, and Mischkin continued in a louder key to rail in strong terms against the Court and the judges. At last a gag was forced into his mouth, and he, with his fellowprisoners, was dragged out of the chamber. A terrible 1 umult ensued in the Court. Many women, some of them being wives of the prisoners, fainted or went into hysterics, and loud cries, cursing the tribunal, were heard. All efforts to restore oHer were fruitless, and the public resisted the attempts made by the officials to make them leave. The defendants, officials, spectators, and gendarmes were involved in a riotous struggle, but eventually a detachment of soldiers succeeded in clearing (he place. The president, together with the other judges and officers of the Court, had sprung from their seats, and were gazing, bewildered and terrified, at the scandalous scene before them, and the president himself was so greatly excited that' he left without declaring that the sitting was closed. It is further stated that the Russian journals have ‘privately’ been enjoined to make no remark on this extraordinary occurrence.