RITUAL MURDER

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 89, 11 October 1913, Page 5

RITUAL MURDER

— , — «» — ' — ACCUSED BEFORE THE COURT. 1 A PROTEST. (By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright.) ST. PETERSBURG, 10th October. The Jewish clerk Beiliss, when formally indicted for the murder of the boy Yushchinßky, protested that ho had been in custody tor twenty-aix months without knowing the reason why. Several times ho burst . into (ears, and in his defence protested that he was not allowed to interview his counsel. The Judges ruled that the interview could only be allowed in circumstances of extreme urgency. . Yushchinsky's mother, in heF evidence, said that she saw Beiliss for the first time on Wednesday last. She suspected no one of the murder. ANTI-SEMITIC JOURNAL SPEAKS OUT. ATTACK ON JUDICIAL AUTHORITIES. (Received October 11, 10 a.m.) KIEFF, 10th October. The Conservative anti-Semite newspaper violently assails the judicial authorities, especially the Public Prosecutor. It contends that the charge against Beiliss accuses a whole religion of infamous superstition. It adds that however advantageous and necessary f from a party standpoint, it may be to prove the existence of ritual murders, the prosecution is not entitled to undertake the task of supplying a living object. [The murder took place in 1911. Although at an enquiry it was stated, showed that the boy had not been the victim of a ritual murder, but had been killed by a gang of thieves to which he belonged, as he was 7 suspected of being an informer, the local " Black Hundred, supported by the Novoe Vremya and other anti-Semitic papers of the capital, at once raised the cry that the murder had beeh committed by Jews for " ritual " purposes — using his blood for Passover bread. This revival of the mediaeval legend "caught on," and the Kieff police, having at first arrested the boy's relatives, released them, and arrested instead a Jew named Beiliss. He, too, was set free after a brief detention. The "Black Hundred," however, continued the campaign with such energy that Beiliss was rearrested, and has remained in prison ever since. In the meantime, Mistchuk, head of the Kieff detectives, was dismissed from office and prosecuted on a charge of fabricating evidence with the object of disproving that the murder was a ritual one. He was acquitted.]