SENTENCED AS SPIES

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25767, 31 March 1949, Page 5

SENTENCED AS SPIES

U.S. SOLDIERS SEIZED BY CZECHS EMBASSY SENDS NOTE OF PROTEST PRAGUE, March 29. The United States Embassy has sent a Note of protest to the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry about sentences for espionage on two American soldiers. In a secret trial the two soldiers were found guilty of espionage. One was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment and the other to 10 years’ imprisonment. The United States Note expressed “serious concern” that the men should have been tried secretly without regard for the normal rights and safeguards due to persons accused on such serious charges. American sources denied categorically that there was any foundation in charges that the men were sent on a special mission. The Embassy said it was learned earlier this month that the Czechoslovak security authorities intended to charge the men, but the Embassy had received no news of their whereabouts and no reply to requests that Americans be permitted to visit them An official Czech statement named the men as “Corporal Alexander Hunter. alias Jones, and Private Clarence Hill, both of the occupation forces in Germany.” The statement gave no details of the charges beyond that the two men crossed the Czech frontier illegally last December “with the intention of spying on Czechoslovakia,” and that they were caught by Czech security forces. The news of the sentences surprised the information section of the American Embassy, which had been trying to get in touch with the men since December, when they went missing from their unit in Germany and v’ere regarded as deserters. Shipping Boycott Planned. Mr Harry Lundberg, president of the American Federation of Labour’s Seafarers’ International Union, announced that preparations were being made by more than 5,000,000 members of the International Transport Workers’ Federation to boycott all ships sailing under lhe flags of Panama and Honduras. Mr Lundberg said that the transfer of American vessels to Panamanian and Honduras registry was designed “to beat paying union wages and to beat living up to the safety rules and regulations.” The international boycott, according to Mr Lqndberg. would be instituted on a date to be fixed soon.— New York. March 29.