THE WRONG MAN

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 107, 7 May 1923, Page 7

THE WRONG MAN

MURDER ON ROME-PRAGUE TRAIN

SOVIET EMISSARIES'. MISTAKE.

(WNIIED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COHRIHI.)

'(AUSTRALIAN . NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.). ■■■■'■■ LONDON/sth'May. . A peaceable Italian merchant, Signor Tomuzi, recently entered a third-class compartment of a direct train from Rxane. to Prague. There were three other'passengers in 1 the compartment. Tomuzi went to sleep, and was awakened a few -hours' later by feeling a -wet_ handkerchief being passed against his mouth. ■Realising that, he was being, chloroformed, he closed with . his ."assailant. During the struggle he rushed' in^ the corridor of the car, from which h&.emptied his revolver into Tomuzi, Jv/ho was killed by the first bullet. His assailant jumped from the train. .. It was proved that the other.. two in the compartment were not connected with the affair. The police, however, arrested a passenger in another compartment, who was. seen to throw objects from a window, also a man who wasfound next morning lying on the track; unconscious,' and with a'broken leg- The police discovered on the line five handkerchiefs"'soaked with chloroform, a dagger, and a- revolver. The arrested persons proved to be students and members of the Italian Communist Party. So far,. the affair was thought, to be merely an attempt at armed; robbery, but a, new development arose through the arrest of the secretary of a Turkish general living in a luxurious villa, on the outskirts of Rome, who is charged with absconding with the, proceeds £>f the sale of a rare, Smyrna ring which-he had been commissioned to sell. The secretary asserted that the general ■ was a secret agent of the Soviet, who had been entrusted with the task of murdering a Turkish captain, Hassan Fruzzi Nuri, who was one of the passengers by the Koine to Prague train on the night Tomuzi was murdered. According to the secretary, Hassan was suspected by the Soviet at Moscow of being in possession of important Bolshevik documents, which he, was going to dispose of 'to. the : secret service of a foreign Power, and -the general had been instructed to catch him dead or alive, and so secure the documents.

Two of the arrested persons have now confessed that they were instructecl by •the Communist Party at the request of the general to follow Hassan from Rome to Prague and kill him, but in the darkness they mistook Tbmuzi for 1 Hassan, and killed the wrong man.

The Italian Government, is imported to -be .taking steps against ..the Turkish general, another Turk, and two Egyptians; but the last-mentioned three and Hassan have so far not been found. . In the meantime the two arrested, men will stand' their trial * and will make the strange defence above narrated.