MURDER OF OBREGON

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 36, 6 November 1928, Page 11

MURDER OF OBREGON

IN CAUSE OF RELIGION STATEMENT OF PRISONER Press Assn. —United Service.) Mexico City, November 4. The trial is proceeding of Jose de Leon Toral, an art student, aged 23. for the murder on July 16 of the Presi-dent-elect of Mexico, General Obregon, in a restaurant of a suburb of Mexico City. When asked to plead Toral said that his idea was to sacrifice liis own life and that of Obregon, which would bring to a climax the religious question and no other bloodshed would occur. “I acted for the good of pll Catholics,” he declared. “I thought of leaving my wife a widow and my children fatherless, but, on the other hasid, I thought also of the innumerable widows and orphans left throughout the country as the result of the conditions which my act might change.” When he said that those who live by the sword die by the sword, he insisted fervently that he was referring to Obregon. There existed a great persecution of. the Catholic Church in Mexico. If the general indifference continued, the cause of religion would be lost in Mexico, and ‘‘to bring things to a head I decided to shoot Obregon.” ALLEGED TORTURE BY POLICE Jose de Leon Toral, during his trial On Saturday for the assassination of General Obregon, said that the police after his arrest hanged him by the thumbs and stretched his body upon a rack and otherwise tortured him to fouce a confession that others were implicated. The police denied the torture.