ARREST AS “NAZI SPY”

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 99, 21 January 1936, Page 6

ARREST AS “NAZI SPY”

Londoner Tells His Story FOUR DAYS IN PRISON “The Italians must be suffering from ‘ spy mania.” This was the remark of Mr. Alastair Napier, a 21-year-old English law student, who was arrested by frontier guards on the Brenner Pass recently and released four days later. “If I had done anything to excite suspicion.” he said, “I could have understood it. This is how it happened: While staying in Innsbruck I thought I would visit Italy for half an hour as the frontier was only an hour’s journey by motor-bus. “Before crossing the border,-! left my camera with the Austrian Customs, and passed through into Italy after the usual passport examination. As I had a long time to wait for the motorbus back to Innsbruck, I walked into the next village, keeping to the high road, and could not have found anything in the way of Italian military ‘secrets,’ even-if I bad wanted to. “I went into an inn in the village and drank a glass of chiauti. Apart from giving my order, I had no conversation with anybody, and did nothing to attract attention. “Judge of my astonishment when, a few minutes later, when going back toward the Brenner Pass, a corpora! of a squad of frontier troops put his hand on my shoulder and gave me to understand by gesture that I was arrested. I was taken to the frontier barracks and searched. They stripped me to the skin, and I was then examined by a police officer. “As far as I could gather, their i-eason for arresting me was that I spoke German, but they found on me a rough chart in pencil of the town of Bad Toelz in Bavaria, which a friend of mine had given me in order to show how I could find a boarding-house which he had recommended. They seemed to think this was some sort of a secret map. “This made the police officer very suspicious, although I told him that if he would communicate with Munich my explanation would be confirmed. He made the strange allegation that J was a spy employed by the German Nazis.. 1 repeatedly asked to be allowed to communicate with Mr. Henderson, the British Consul in Innsbruck, but this was refused me for three £ays. “They locked me in a cell where I

had no proper bed, but had to sleep on a mattress on a rough portion of the floor. I was not able to get a proper wash.”