PLOT IN SPAIN

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 302, 17 September 1936, Page 11

PLOT IN SPAIN

Plan to Assassinate Azana and Others SEVERAL ARRESTS MADE Executions by Rebels at Huesca By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Madrid, September 15. Police discovered a plot to assassinate President Azana, Senors Caballero and Prieto, the Socialist leaders, “La Passionarix," the Communist woman leader, and General Mangada, commander on the Somosierra front. It is alleged to have been organised by a former Communist, now the Fascist leader Manuel Mateo, and financed -by Jorge Loring, .nephew of the noted airman, accomplices being Senors Juan Llovet and Santos Aranda. The two last-named have already been imprisoned. The assassination was delegated to eight \men who came to Madrid from Malaga and Valencia with false passports. A number of them were arrested. A drastic purge of the Spanish navy has resulted in the dismissal of many officers. , _ Pilot Sacrifices Life. A Government. pilot, Fenix Urtubi, outnumbered by three rebel aeroplanes . in an air fight, drove straight into one of his opponents. Both aeroplanes crashed in flames, Urtubi being incinerated. The rebel pilot descended by parachute and was taken prisoner. Urtubi was the sergeant-pilot who was reported on July 28 to be flying a rebel officer from Morocco to Spain, and who looped, droppin- his passenger out, after which he ”ew to Madrid and joined the Government. A Government aeroplane brought down an insurgent machine intact at Azuara, near Saragossa, capturing both occupants. It was one of a squadron which was endeavouring to provision the besieged insurgent city of Huesca by dropping tins of meat, hard bread,, and ice, but most of the packages had fallen in the Government lines. Sietamo Mass of Ruins.

The Barcelona correspondent of “The Times’’ says that Sietamo, which, after changing hands several times in the loyalist advance to Huesca, fell to the Government on September 12, is a mass of ruins. The majority of the 400 rebel defenders were killed.

Refugees from Huesca report that when Government aeroplanes bombed the town 150 men, women and children were taken from their homes and executed in the public square by the order of Colonel Solans, whom the rebels, who were quarrelling among themselves, later executed for incompetence. "The Times” Casablanca correspondent says Rene Bru, newsreel operator, who arrived by steamer from Tangier, was arrested by the insurgents for filming incidents after the capture of Anandaleja and Badajoz. He says that he filmed 1000 prisoners in the bull-ring at Anandaleja, awaiting execution. Bru was arrested on returning to Sevilla, it is believed, on the denunciation bf jealous colleagues, and was threatened with death, but his firm sent by air judiciously-cut copies of his films, whereupon he was released.