Echoes Of Petrov Case In Spy Trial

Press, Volume C, Issue 29467, 20 March 1961, Page 11

Echoes Of Petrov Case In Spy Trial

(N.Z.P.A .-Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, March 17. Echoes of the Petrov espionage case were heard in a packed London Court today where five persons are on trial in a spy case. The reference to Petrov came when one of the accused, a former Royal Naval officer, Henry Houghton, told the Court of his meetings with a Pole who wanted him to get information from the Portland Naval Base. When he threatened to report the Pole to the police. Houghton said the Pole said to him: “Do you remember a man by the name of Petrov? “In Fear of His Life” “The Australians can’t protect him. The Australian Government give him £2OOO a year and protection, and yet he is in fear of his life.” The Pole also reminded him of the murdered Russian leader, Trotsky, said Houghton. “We got him after 20 years, and he lived in a fortress in Mexico. We could get you easy.” Standing trial with the 55-year-old Houghton is his fiancee. Ethel Gee. aged 46, who worked with him at the Navy's Underwater Weapons Centre at Portland. The others are Gordon Lonsdale, a 37-year-old company director, who, the prosecution says, may be a Russian, and a married couple, Peter Kroger, aged 50, and his wife, Helen, aged 47. Their London home is alleged to be the centre of the spy ring. The trial was nearing the end of its fifth day when Houghton spoke of the threats made to him. These culminated in an

attack in which he claimed he “got the biggest hammering I have ever had in my life.” Telephone Call Houghton related receiving a telephone call from a stranger in January, 1957. He met the man in London, and the conversation turned to Houghton’s work at Portland. The stranger had asked if he could get “any snippets of naval information.” Houghton told him he could not, and that he would report the matter to the police. Houghton said he met the man again in the autumn of 1957 taking with him a newspaper featuring naval news, and said it contained “a large amount of unclassified information about the Navy ” Beaten Up Denying that he took any information from restricted sources. Houghton said when he received another summons during the winter of that year he ignored it. Consequently he was accosted by two men and beaten up badly. The' case was adjourned till Monday. *