PILOT ARRESTED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 167, 17 July 1941, Page 8

PILOT ARRESTED

AFTER BOMBING NAZIS

Dismissed R.A.F. As Being "Undesirable Alien" United Press Association.—Copyright. Rec. noon. LONDON, July 16. Stepping from a British bomber after raiding Brest, Pilot-Officer Harold Isaac Coriat found detectives waiting to arrest him. Nine months after he had begun to bomb the Germans, it was discovered that he is an "undesirable alien." He pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to making a misleading statement in his application for the Royal Air Force commission, purporting that he was Robert Coryat, aged 34, born in Devonshire, whereas he is 38 and was born in Morocco.

Previous convictions included nine months in New Zealand in 1928 for false pretences, and a sentence in Australia for passing valueless cheques.

Defending counsel described the situation as Gilbertian. Coriat had been guilty of obtaining the right to fight for the country he regarded as his own.

A wing-commander, in evidence, said Coriat's courage was up to the standard of the R.A.F. He would be a loss to the R.A.F.

Accused was bound over for two years and dismissed from the R.A.F.

Under the name of Colin Coryton, a young Englishman was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment with hard labour by Mr. Justice Ostler, in the Supreme Court at Napier on June 6, 1928, a having found him guilty of obtaining from Mrs. Helen Caroline Lowry the sum of £300 by falsely representing that he had a letter of credit for £100 C at the National Bank of New Zealand at Nelson.

In sentencing accused, Mr. Justice Ostler, after describing the prisoner as a "vulgar adventurer," said, "We in New Zealand appreciate plain folk and know their true worth, but you have been a mean impostor, travelling about the country in a Rolls Royce car, with a manservant, leaving behind a train of debt. It is in the public interest that you should receive a sharp lesson."