TERRIBLE DEATHS.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 December 1922, Page 5

TERRIBLE DEATHS.

BARBARITY IN GREECE. EXECUTION OF MINISTERS. A GHASTLY STORY. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received Dec. 20, 8.5 p.m. London, Dec. 19. A special correspondent of the Daily Express at Athens reveals the barbarous horrors attending the execution of ex-Cabinet Ministers, which the military censorship thus far prevented being published. After the trial the revolutionary committee sat until three o’clock in the morning debating the executions, and when a decis'on was made it was carried out swiftly. M. Gounaris was taken from hospital on a stretcher and motored to a place a mile and a half outside the city, where he was left on the stretcher in a dying state while the motor van went back to fetch five other prisoners. One of them died of heart failure in the van, but he was propped up with the others. M. Gounaris had injections of strychnine to strengthen his heart and enable him to stand up in front of the firing party. The Ministers were then asked if they had anything to say, but none replied. The order of fire was given, and the moment the Ministers fell the firing party rushed forward and emptied revolvers into the corpses, including the man who died on the way. The bodies were then thrown into a lorry, taken to a public cemetery and flung in a heap on muddy ground. Later ,their relatives were given half-an-hour to fetch the bodies, otherwise they were thrown into a pauper’s grave. In one case a widow was not notified, so was unable to rescue her husband’s body. Other mourners had to pull the heap of bodies apart to find their dead, which were almost unrecognisable from mud.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.