ASSASSINATION PLOT

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 67, 16 September 1936, Page 11

ASSASSINATION PLOT

MADRID DISCOVERY

PRESIDENT AND OTHERS

FIGHTING CONTINUES

SLAUGHTER AT HUESCA

DDited Pross Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received September 16, 1 p.m.) MADRID, September 15. Police discovered a plot to assassinate President Azana, Senors Caballero and Prieto, the Socialist leaders, and "La Passionaria;" the Communist woman leader, and j General Mangada, commander on the j Somosierra front. It is alleged to I have been organised by a former j Communist, now the Fascist, leader Manuel Mateo, and financed by Jorge j Loring, nephew of the noted airman, accomplices being Senors Juan Llovet and Santos Aranda. The two lastnamed 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 2585 officers. A BRAVE PILOT. 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, I and who looped, dropping his passen-i ger out, after which he flew 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 IN 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 (quarrelling among themselves) later executed for incompetence. . PHOTOGRAPHER'S CLOSE CALL. "The Times" Casablanca correspondent says Rene Bru, a 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 exer cution. Bru was arrested on returning to Sevilia, it is believed, on the denunciation of jealous colleagues, and was threatened with death, but his firm sent by air judiciously-cut copies of his films whereupon he was released.