EXECUTIONS IN RUSSIA

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27051, 28 May 1953, Page 9

EXECUTIONS IN RUSSIA

Spying For U.S. Alleged (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 8 p.m.) MOSCOW, May 27. Russia today, announced the capture and execution of four men, described as American spies, who were dropped by parachute in the Ukraine. The announcement was published in the • newspapers “Pravda” and “Izvestia.” It said that four “diversionists” were dropped from an American fourengined plane on the night of April 26.

The announcement added that they confessed their activities and the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court sentenced them to death and the sentence was carried out.

The men were armed, had four American short-wave transmitters, gold and Soviet and other money, and plates to print anti-Communist leaflets.

The' four men betrayed Soviet Satriots during the war, took part in fazi atrocities, and enlisted after the war in the service of American Intelligence, said the announcement.

They trained at a special espionage diversionist school of American Intelligence in Bad Wiessel, near Munich.

They had testified such types of school exist also in Munich, Frankfurt, Kaufbeuren, and Bad Werishofen. In all those schools the American Intelligence secretly prepared “diversionists and murderers” for dispatch to the Soviet Union and the countries of the peoples’ democracies, claimed the statement.

The leader of the Kaufbeuren school is Major Ronald Otto Bollenbach, United States Assistant Air and Naval Attache in Moscow In 1946-47. ‘ It said that the four men flew from Munich to Athens on April 23, where they boarded an American plane which dropped them in Soviet Union territory.

Alleged Instructions “The arrested saboteurs testified that American Intelligence instructed them to make their way to Kiev and Odessa,” said the statement. “They were instructed to settle down in these cities end establish radio communication in code with the American Intelligence radio centre in Western Germany in order to receive further instructions for acts of terror and sabotage in the Soviet Union.” The statement said that the four sentenced men had been shot.