POLES TRY TWO FRENCHMEN

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26032, 8 February 1950, Page 5

POLES TRY TWO FRENCHMEN

CONSULAR OFFICIAL ADMITS SPYING

BRITISH DIPLOMAT SAID TO BE INVOLVED

rr- a LONDON, February 6 inn??£ l t As3OClated Press says that an i? t U c 1 te spy network in north-west Poland was described to-day when six men appeared before the district miliS our t, at Szczecin (Strettin), charged witn espionage for a foreign f ° we £ Th f men were four Poles and R?,hi^X e . nch nationals, Andre Simon 3 Secretary of the French Consulate at Szczecin, and Gaston iJouet, a radio technician. The State’s charges mentioned 31 Foies said to have been recruited for intelligence work by Robineau or his agents. Seven are to be called as prosecution witnesses during the trial Three more are co-defendants with ■Robineau, but it cannot be learned whether the remaining 21 have been arrested.

It was Robineau’s arrest on November 8, when he was about to leave Warsaw in a Paris-bound aircraft, that was the beginning of the recent wave of arrests with the subsequent expulsion of Poles from France and French from Poland.

Robineau pleaded guilty t<s the charges, which may result in the death sentence. He admitted that he served the French intelligence service because “he liked the job.” Jaunty and self-possessed, Robineau told the court that he spied in Poland from December, 1947, until his arrest last November. He led a French spy network trained to collect information on ports, shipping, airfields, military units, and armaments, as well as political and social data.

While visiting his father in Warsaw he met a former military attache, Major Alfred Humm, and Mr Rene Bardet, a former vice-consul in Stettin, both of whom persuaded him to take up intelligence work. He said that his first assignment ’involved the collection of shipping information at the ports of Gydnia and Gydnsk. Later he was transferred to Stettin, where he gathered information on airfields. He said that he had been instructed by Mr Bardet to get in touch with a British diplomat, who was not named. He did so and exchanged important military and air force information. The Court adjourned until to-mor-row.