SECRET TRIAL
BERLIN, December 11. A mysterious trial began to-day at Kiel.
Behind locked doors, Lieut. who is attached to the counter-espion-age department of the German Navy Major Seeman ~and a number oi business men, one of whom, Herr Bcltjens was among the most daring of German airmen during the war, are being tried for attempting to ship a large quantity of munitions to China. In January 1928 the Customs officers at Kiel examined a quantity ol packing cases labelled “Brass Goods,” which filled 16 railway trucks and were about to be transferred to a Norwegian steamer.
The first case opened contained rifle cartridges, and the remainder showed that no fewer than 8,000,000 cartridges were to be smuggled out of Germany to China, contrary to the undertaking given in the Treaty of Versailles. General Groener, the .Minister of Defence, declared in the Reichstag that the case was perfectly simple one and that a strict inquiry into it would he made. The public learned with amazement yesterday however, that the Public Prosecutor, acting on instructions from the Government would demand that the trial should be held in secret. Revelations would be made, it was stated, that, in the interest of the State must not be known outside the court.
To-day, as predicted, the Public Prosecutor demanded the exclusion of the public and the representatives of the Press from the court during the whole trial, which, it is expected will last a week.
ACTIVE OFFICERS. It is stated that he has been forced to do this because the defence will allege that the military and naval authorities knew and approved of the plan and-that the failure to execute it was due to the “stupidity” of the Customs authorities.
Colour is given to this explanation by the fact that a number of active officers of the Army and Navy, including Major-General von Schleicher and Admiral Kirizel, have been summoned as witnesses.
The Republican newspapers here prosteted vigorously against the proposal to hold the whole trial in secret.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HOG19300208.2.6
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Hokitika Guardian, 8 February 1930, Page 2
Word count
Tapeke kupu
334SECRET TRIAL Hokitika Guardian, 8 February 1930, Page 2
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
The Greymouth Evening Star Co Ltd is the copyright owner for the Hokitika Guardian. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of the Greymouth Evening Star Co Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in