POWELKA'S SENTENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 69, 30 June 1910, Page 5

POWELKA'S SENTENCE.

PUBLIC MEETING OF PROTEST. By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. The executive of the Powelka Committee to-night made preliminary arrangements for a public meeting, which it is proposed to hold on the evening of Sunday, July 10. It is computed that about seven thousand persons in Wellington have, signed a petition to the Minister of Justice for mitigation of Powelka's sentence. Yesterday we published a telegram from' Wellington purporting to give the substance of a letter from Powelka, now in prison, to the editor of the Xew Zealand Times. The Times had gone to the trouble of making a special block in order that a fac-simile of the Powelka, signature might appear at the foot of' the letter. It would now seem, nowever, as if the Times had been hoaxed. The Minister for Justice states that he made immediate enquiry in the proper quarters, and had ascertained that no such letter as that appearing in the New Zealand Times was passed or allowed to be passed by the gaoler. Such a course would be a plain breach of the prison regulations. "As no means by which the letter could have reached an outside authority have been discovered," he added, "it seems highly probable that it is not authentic." The New Zealand Times of yesterday said, in this connection:— "The reply to this statement is that the letter is in the hands of the' editor of tihe New Zealand Times, and is quite authentic."