SENTENCED FOR SEDITION

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21117, 19 March 1934, Page 9

SENTENCED FOR SEDITION

AKIiIVAI. OK O. K. NKI.SON The Government motor-vessel. Maui Pomare, which was expected to arrive in the stream at Lyttellon at midnight last, night, was to have among her passengers O. V. Nelson, who was recently sentenced in Samoa to eight months' imprisonment on charges of sedition. Nelson will be taken from Hyttelton to Paparua prison. lie has been given lease to appeal against his sentence, but. his application for bail, pending the hearing, has been refused, and the reason for his internment in l'aparua is ihe gaol's nearness to the vessel's first port of cull. Ten year.V exile is also part of Nelson's sentence. A message from Samoa, published on March !), stated that documentary evidence clearly showed that Nelson had found himself in a dilemma. He had either to confess that the Mau mission had failed and that the money was wasted or to invent a further shadow for the Mau to follow. After the breakdown of negotiations between the Mau and the Administrator (Brigadier-General Hart), Nelson obviously cast restraint aside and began a secret movement to organise quietly und to gain control. Nelson himself had written that this course was bound to result in a clash of some kind sooner or later, thus indicating that a condition of rebellion was bound to follow if the course were pursued. As the evidence disclosed that Ihe Mau chiefs recently sentenced for participating in the November malagas had been deceived Dy Nelson, the judge said he would recommend the Administrator to remit the remainder of their sentences.