ITALIAN SENSATION.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 May 1923, Page 2

ITALIAN SENSATION.

A DRAMA REVEALED. AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. CADLE ASSOCIATION. LONDON,'May 5. An amazing drama of secret documents, revenge and Communist and Soviet intrigue will come to light in a case shortly to he hoard in the Italian courts. A peaceable Italian merchant, Signor Tomuzi, entered a third class compartment of n direct train from Rome to Prague. There were three other passengers in the compartment. Tomusi went to sleep and was awakened a few hours later by feeling a wet handkerchief pressed against his mouth. Realising that lie was being chloroformed, he closed with his assailant. During the struggle he was stabbed by a man who rushed into the corridor of the car, from which he emptied his revolver into Tomuzi, who was killed hv the first bullet.

It was proved that the other two in flic compartment were not connected with the affair.

The police, however, arrested a passenger iu another compartment who was seen to throw objects from a window, also a man who was found next morning lying on the track unconscious and with a broken leg.

The police discovered on the line five handkerchiefs soaked with chloroform, a dagger, and a revolver. The arrested persons proved to ho students who were members of the Italian Communist Party.

So far the affair was thought to he merely an attempt at armed robbery, but a new development arose through tho arrest of the secretary of a I urkish general living in a luxurious villa on the outskirts of Rome, who is charged with absconding with the proceeds of the sale of a rave Smyrna ring which he had been entrusted to sell.

The secretary asserted that the general was a secret agent of the Soviet, who had been entrusted with the task of murdering a Turkish Captain, Hassan Fruzzi Muri, who was one of the passengers bv tho Rome to I vague train on the night Tomuzi was murdered. According to the secretary, Hassail was suspected by the Soviet at Moscow of being in possession of important Bolshevist documents which he was going to dispose to the secret service of a foreign Power, and the general had been instructed to catch him dead or alive, and so secure the documents. Two of the arrested persons have now confessed that they were instructed by the Communist Party at the request of tho general to follow Ilassnu from Rome to Prague and kill him, but in the darkness they mistook Tomuzi for Hassan and killed the wrong man. The Italian Government is reported to he taking steps against the Turkish general and also another Turk, and two' Egyptians, but the latter three and Hassan so far have not been found.

In the meantime the two arrested men will stand trial and will make the strange defence narrated.