WRONG MAN KILLED.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17756, 7 May 1923, Page 9

WRONG MAN KILLED.

ITALIAN TRAIN TRAGEDY.

AMAZING STORY OF INTRIGUE AND MURDER. (BT CABLB—PBBSS ASSOCIATION— COI'TBJOHT.) (ATJSTRALXAK AND H.I- CABLE ASSOCIATION) (Received May 6th, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON, May 5. An amazing drama of secret documents, revenge, nnd Oomnumist and Soviet intrigue will come to light in a ease shortly to bo heard in the Italian Courts.

A peaceable Italian merchant, Signer Tonvuzi, entered a third-class compartment of the direct train from Rome to Pi-ague. There were three other passengers in the compartment. Tomuzi went to sleep, and was awakened a few hours later by feeling a wet handkerchief being pressed against his mouth. Realising that he was being chloroformed, he closed with his assailant. Dwring the struggle he was stabbed by a man who rushed into the corridor of the car from which he emptied his revolver into Tomuzi, who was killed by the first bullet. His assailant jumped from the train.

It was proved that the other two men in the compartment were not connected with the affair. Tho police, however, arrested a passenger in another compartment who was seen to throw objects from the window, and also a man who was found next morning lying on the railway track imconscious and with a. broken leg. Tho police also discovered on tho line five handkerchiefs soaked with chloroform; and a dagger and a revolver. Tlie arrested persons proved to bo student members of tho Italian Communist Party. So far,' the affair was thought to be merely an attempt at armed robbery, but a new development arose through the arrest of tho secretary of a Turkish general living in a luxurious villa on tho outskirts of Rome, who is charged with absconding with the proceeds of tho sale of a rare Smyrna ring which he had been entrusted to sell. The secretary asserted tliat the general was a secret agent of tho Russian Soviet Government, who had been entrusted with the task of miudorinpr a. Turkish captain. Hassan Fruzzi N*uri, who was one of the passengers by tha Rome to Prague train on the night Tomuzi was murdered. According to tho secretary, Hassan was suspected by the Soviet authorities at _ Moscow ofi being in possession of important Bolshevist documents which he was going to dispose of to the secret service agents of a foreign Power, and the general had been instructed to catoh him, dead or alive, and so secure the documents. Two of the arrested persons have now confessed that they were instructed by the Communist Party, at the request of tho general, to follow Hassan from. Rome to Prague and kill him, but in the darkness they mistook Tcmuzi for Hassan and killed the wrong man. The Italian Government is reported to be taking steps against the Turkish general and another Turk and two Egyptians, but the latter three and Hassan so far have not been found. In the meantime the two arrested men will stand' their trial and will malko a strange. de fence.