FRANCO PRISON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 157, 6 July 1939, Page 21

FRANCO PRISON.

IRISHMAN'S FATE.

A THIRTY-YEARS' SENTENCE.

DRAMATIST'S RELEASE

EFFORTS.

(Special.—By Air Mall.)

LONDOX, June 10.

Sean O'Casey, the famous Irish dramatist, ie one of the most active member* of a London committee which ie being formed to secure the release of Frank Ryan, the Irish patriot, now serving » thirty-years' sentence in a Franco prison in Spain.

In 103(5 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Ry all was leader of Rr* i 1 \°T CtiCm ° f the International Bngade. He was captured by Franco forces and sentenced to death. But De \alera succeeded in getting him a remission of 30 years in prison.

Mr. Jack Carney, one of Rvan's greatest friends, declared this week- "Frank Ryan was the most popular man in Ireland. He was a firebrand of a man, biwe -made with a fresh complexion and brilliant blue eyee. The women were crazy about him. Everyone was. "Ho felt hurt when General O'Duffy took a band of Irishmen to Spain to fight for Franco. He thought tfie world would misunderstand the Trish people. >o he organised another band of Irishmen and took them to fight on the side of tliß Republican Government. 'Just I'.v way of neutralising the O'Duffy affair, he told me. And when he came track wounded to England on leave he hated to return to Treland. 'I have to speak with the mothers of the lads who died, and I'm afraid they might not understand,' he said."