BRIDGE BREAKER

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1919, Page 8

BRIDGE BREAKER

THE CRIME OF WERNER HORN

PRISONER'S ADMISSION.

Werner Horn, a German officer, who was subsequently sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for the crime, admitted before a United < States Commissioner that he blew up the Canadian-Pacific railroad bridge over the St. Croix river in MAdam parish, N. 8., on 2nd February, 1915, but insisted that it was a military act in a hostile country during wartime.

"Yes," I did it," said Horn to the Commissioner, "I did it in behalf of my country, my fatherland, as an officer of the German army in wartime. I caused the explosion that.blew up,the bridge." The admission was made at a hearing on a petition of the British Government for Horn's extradition to Canada. Horn was brought under guard to Jersey City from Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, where he had been confined for several months. He was conviced by a Federal' jury in Boston 13th June, 1917, on a charge of unlawfully transporting dynamite, and was sentenced to serve 18 months in jail, and to pay a fine of 1000 dollars. The prisoner was without counsel. He said that he had communicated with the Swiss Legation, and expected that it would send counsel to defend him, but after a long wait he wanted to attend the hearing without legal aid. He declined an offer to adjourn the case until counsel could be supplied.

He came into the court-room smiling, but was visibly affected when the Canadian law, showing that he was liable to life imprisonment, if extradited to that country, was read.