AN OFFICER'S STATEMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIII, Issue 81, 7 April 1902, Page 5

AN OFFICER'S STATEMENT.

REVENGE THE OBJECT

LONDON,. April 5

Lieut. Picton, who was cashiered in connection.with the shooting, arrived here by the steamier Canada. In the course of an interview with a "Dajly Mail" representative he stat-, ed that Captain Hunt's party of Carbineers attacked Baraud Viljoen's farm--at Duivelssroop in September. Hunt was left wounded on the veran- i dah. " Next day Morant and Handcock found Hunt's body stripped and brutally kicked, the face and legs slashed with a knife, one eye-gouged out, and the neck broken. Mr Reuter, missionary at the station where Hunt was buried, so Picton alleged, confirmed this. Morant and Handcock swore revenge and ordered that if the murderers were captured no quarter was to be given them. A Boer caught dressed in-Hunt's clothes got short shrift. Later, eight others were captured, and a drumhead court-martial which was held showed that they belonged to the same party, and they were executed. Revenge, not plunder, was the motive. Lieutenant Picton considered that the laws of war justified the executions, and said the story about obtaining £ 20,000 from Boer waggons was a lie. He says Mrs Schiel, wife of Colonel Schiel, who was a prisoner proved that Handcock and Morant were at a farmhouse 40 miles away on the night the- Rev. :C. Heese, German missionary, was murdered Morant, says Lieutenant Picton, .in his dying/moments protested- his mnocence. „ „ - MELBOURNE, April 6. Lord Kitchener has cabled to Lord Hopetoun the details of the shooting. Hif report confirms the particulars already received .through the War Office. Lord Kitchener says: There were, in my opinion, no extenuating circumstances." ' LONDON, April 4. Admiral Morant denies that Lieu-tfe-int Morant is his son, or in any way related to him.