BEHEADED BY NAZIS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 95, 24 April 1939, Page 5

BEHEADED BY NAZIS.

A BRITISH AGENT? MADE TO WEAR BLACK MASK. TRIAL IK SECRECY. (Special.—By Air Mail.) LONDON, April 1. News has reached England .of the execution of a mysterious Irishman after a trial whic was conducted with the utmost secrecy.

The man arrived at Cologne airport, coming from France three weeks ago. Immediately he stepped from the machine, waiting Gestapo men seized him and hurried him to a room reserved for passengers whose papers are not in order.

When he emerged a few minutes latpr' to enter the police car a black hood had been pulled over his face, and the police had driven off the curious, who had been waiting for his reappearance.

He was taken to Gestapo head-.! quarters, where the features were entirely hidden from view by a black mask of thin metal. He whs not allowed to quit his mask from that day until his head dropped from the headsman's block on to the sawdust in the execution yard.

He wore the mask when he faced the "People's Tribunal," and contrary to the usual practice no evidence was given in public. Instead, the judges were handed type notes of agents, who are supposed to have had him under observation, and the prisoner was not told what the charges against him were or allowed to have legal representation.

The death sentence was pronounced at midnight, and five hours later was carried out. To guard against all possibility of identity being established, the man's remains were cremated immediately afterwards.

The facts, such as they are given here, have been collected by French agents, and are now in possession of I the British on the assumption that the jhooded victim was a British agent.

Most remarkable of all the facts connected with the affair is the explanation offered by the French authorities for the strange secrecy.

It is that the German secret service has found a double of the dead man, and hopes to use him to-get on the trail of those in Germany who have bean furnishing the dead agent with $he information of vital importance. This theory is strengthened by the fact that communications from the' Irishman, known only by a number, have been traced passing through the post in France since the execution. It is alleged that the executed man was responsible for furnishing to the British Government in January last details of the German plan for simultaneous invasion of Holland and Switzerland in an attempt to turn the famous Maginot line.