WAR-SCARE CAMPAIGN

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 150, 15 September 1927, Page 11

WAR-SCARE CAMPAIGN

SOVIET_BUSY TRIAL OF SUPPOSED SPIES NINE CONDEMNED By Cable. —Press Association.—Copyright LONDON, Tuesday. Conflicting reports are to hand concerning the sequel to the recent trial at Leningrad of the 26 persons who were alleged to have been engaged in espionage on behalf of the British Secret Service. The Leningrad correspondent of the Central News Agency reported this morning that the nine who were condemned were summarily shot. The Dutchman, Goyer, was alleged to have confessed not to save his life, “but to let everybody know the crimes of my masters—the British Intelligence Service.” A later message stated that the executions had not yet been carried out. The Moscow correspondent of the “Daily Express” says that at the trial the State Prosecutor spoke for five hours. His speech was mainly an indictment of England and directed against Sir Austen Chamberlain’s Note, which he described as “full of lies, blackmail and hypocrisy.” The prosecutor asserted that the information which the alleged British spy-masters, Captain Boyd and Colonel Meiklejohn, asked Goyer and Klopushkin to obtain usually concerned the fleet. He asserted that Goyer worked on behalf of the British Mission in Moscow. (This Sir R. M. Hodgson, formerly Charge d’Affaires at Moscow, has since explicity denied.) The correspondent adds that Professor Nitikln, a talkative Russian poisongas expert, who liked his wife to have silk stockings in return for which he gave what he said was harmless information, was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. The Riga correspondent of “The Times” states that Baltic newspapers say a Norwegian diplomat, acting on behalf of Britain, has informed the Soviet that none of the persons accused and condemned to death for alleged spying, had worked for the British Government. The correspondent says the Soviet is exploiting the trial throughout Russia for its war-scare campaign.—A. and N.Z.