BACK FROM DEVIL’S ISLAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 690, 15 June 1929, Page 18

BACK FROM DEVIL’S ISLAND

Wr©igful!y-Impris@ied Man Returns from Dreadful Exile

■ HE most amazing in- I stance of miscarriage of | justice since the cele•brated Dreyfus case—a I l&M story replete with startling revelations and involving the misdeeds of a treacherous international spy—has just come to light with the release of Henri Bellon, an innocent man, who was sent to Devil’s Island for life on a charge of having caused the arrest of a French spy in Switzerland. Henri Bellon is now in Marseilles, where he has joined his old mother. He was sentenced on August S, 1916, by a French Military Court, but remained in a prison cell at Caen until June 21, 1921, before he was shipped to Devil’s Island. There he was given the little hut of the spy TJllmo, a lone, miserable dwelling, with nothing but the sea and the constant swishing of the waves before him to soothe him or—drive him mad. In 1927 Henri still lived. In September of that year the French Court of Justice declared him innocent, and ordered his rehabilitation; but it was only now, in March, 1929, that Henri Bellon was at last set free. Once at Devil’s Island, it is difficult to come back to civilisation. Served in 1914 The story of Henri Bellon is truly amazing. A barber by trade, Henri weiit to war, like all the rest of them, in 1914. A year later he was wounded and practically crippled for life. They sent him back to his wife and mother in Marseilles. There he tried to work at his trade; but conditions were unfavourable, so he went to Switzerland to try his luck. His wife and mother remained at Marseilles. One evening, at Geneva, he was seated at a small table in the Kursaal, when a sti’anger, who introduced himself as Stanley Mitchel, United States Consul at Kieff, joined him. Mitchei was very affable, spoke half a dozen languages, and so fascinated the Frenchman that the two became very friendly at short notice. The first thing Mitchel asked Bellon a day or so later was a contribution of 300 francs to engineer the escape of a Russian officer from a prisoners’ camp in Germany. Bellon willingly gave up 300 francs, and later added 2,000 francs upon the representation of Mitchei that the sum was needed to bring the Russian to Geneva. But the Russian never showed up. i Nor did Mitchel return the money to Bellon, as he had solemnly promised. Chase Across Frontier Bellon decided to have Mitchel ararrested for obtaining his money on false representations, but Mitchel managed to get free and crossed the frontier into France, followed by Bellon, who wanted his money or Mitchel’s hide. The moment they were on French territory Mitchel turned upon Bellon and had him dragged into the court, claiming that Bellon had denounced him, a spy in the service of France, to the authorities of a foreign nation. Investigation of the case showed that Mitchel was indeed employed by the Second Bureau of • France, but that he was in reality accredited to the German Secret Service, which he

was “double-crossing” in favour of France. Bellon swore he did not know anything of the man’s occupation, except that he had swindled him out of 2,300 francs. The French Captain Desverinnes, chief of the 15th Division Or the Second Bureau, and directly responsible for Stanley Mitchel, produced documents which convicted Bellon of the crime of having caused the arrest of a French Secret Service man on foreign territory. In his defence Bellon stated the documents were forged to save the face of the service, but it did him no good. On the contrary, it made his case more difficult. He was sentenced by court-martial and locked up at Caen pending his deportation for life to Devil’s Island. After five years in his prison cell they at last sent him to Devil’s Island, where he suffered all the moral and physical tortures for which this island is notorious. He was on the Island four years, when the Governor of Cayenne had him taken to the regular detention quarters on the South American continent because of his good conduct. Meanwhile, the French Deague of Man’s Rights worked indefatigably to establish Henri Bellon’s innocence. In 1927 it succeeded by producing the proofs of Mitehel’s duplicity and his record as an international crook. Bellon was reprieved, but it took another two years to get him actually free. He is now 43 years old end grey. He was 30 when sentence was passed upon him. “Hell —A Paradise” “I am not a resentful man,” he said as he left Paris from the Gare du Lyons, “but there is just one man I would like to get. I may meet him some day. But now I have only one wish; my mother. “When I was sentenced to Devil’s Island my wife took all we possessed and ran off. “She got a divorce later, of course, and married again, I think. “Yes, Devil’s Island is a devil of a place. Hell must be a Paradise in compani on. To be back in France is wonderful. I’ve been treated badly, but —damn it! I’ll die for France any time.”