SENTENCED TO DEATH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 March 1943, Page 4

SENTENCED TO DEATH

SOUTH AFRICAN BOXER ON CHARGE OF TREASON. JUDGE’S OBSERVATIONS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.45 a.m.) CAPE TOWN, March 11. Robey Leibrandt was found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death. In giving judgment, the Judge said the German Government would not have given Leibrandt a passage in a submarine if it had not been greatly interested in Leibrandt's project. Leibrandt probably had made an agreement with the German Government for purposes of his own which partly were also the purposes of the German Government. A message from Pretoria on December 16 last read:—A German parachutist captured in North Africa was a witness at the trial of Robey Leibrandt and six others, charged with treason. Leibrandt represented South Africa as a heavyweight boxer at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. The German parachutist, who was flown to Pretoria to give evidence, said he recognised Leibrandt, who had been a lance-cor-poral in his division in Germany in 1940-41. Much of the parachutist’s evidence was given in secret. The Crown alleged that Leibrandt was sent from Germany to South Africa in a U-boat, with large sums of money and radio equipment, for organising a rebellion against the South African Government.