BRIGANDAGE IN TURKEY.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1115, 21 November 1883, Page 2

BRIGANDAGE IN TURKEY.

The'capture of the Governor of S donica, with the cadi and medjiiss of that town, is an extreme instance of the complete palsy which has crept upon the Turkish Government since; the war of 1877-78. The bandits demand a ransom of £30,000, an ! it is probable that they will get it. Alter the money has bci-n paid, the Seraskierate may commission an energetic officer like Hafiz Pasha to exterminate the band—a task which he will perform in the rough-and-ready fashion peculiar to Turkish officials* Any village which may have been used by the brigands will be burned, „ and the chief men put to death after n A certain number have been examiner’ & touching the lair of the banditti. A * favourite method of extorting evidence on such occasions is to hang the person nmler examination by the heels, and to light a smoky fire under his nose. In tax collection this species of coercion has also been found very useful. For the' rest, Salomon, although one of the chief commercial centres of Turkey, has long been afflicted by the depredations of banditti. The capture of Colonel Synge and his wife .some three years ago will be in the recollection of all, but it is not generally known that the carrying away of that officer was no isolated deed. Daring the Russian war, when Salonica was full of soldiers, brigands would walk into the town and coolly march away with well-to-do citizens, and some of these captures were made in the public gardens>on high days and holidays, when the whole town was taking its ease. Turkey is fast relapsing into the anarchy which marked the last days of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth century, when outside the larger towns the whole country was at the mercy of robber chiefs called Bere-beys.