IN GRIP OF SOVIET

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 April 1933, Page 7

IN GRIP OF SOVIET

ENGINEERS' ORDEALS OFFICIAL REVELATIONS [BY CABLE —PRESS ASSN. —COPYRIGHT.] LONDON, April 11. Another twenty page White Paper has been issued by the Government regarding the Moscow arrests, giving despatches that were sent by Sir Esmond Ovey (Ambassador) and Mr Strang (Counsellor) from the British Embassy at Moscow, to Sir John Simon. The period covered by these despatches is that from March 19 to April 7. There is an astonishing revelation' of the O.G.P.U. methods of justice, under which the various accused men were examined separately, daily and sometimes for twenty hours. The accused were told of the alleged confession of their friends, and were threatened with dire consequences if they did not similarly confess. The White Paper is also important in indicating the charges on which the O.G.P.U. are likely to rely at Wednesday’s trial. Thus, the prisoner Monkhouse was shown a signed statement in Thornton’s handwriting admitting that a long list of small presents and monetary payments had been made by him over the past decade. The items were trifling ones, being for clothes, etc., that were given to Russian engineers and technicians. These gifts are now being used to bolster the charges of inciting to sabotage and espionage. Monkhouse’s impression is that the alleged sabotage occurrences- were at Zlatovsk.

A feature of the accusation brought against the prisoner Nordwell is that he has been spending money for wrecking purposes. He was confronted by Labanoff, a Russian engineer, who had obviously been brought from prison, and who in Nordwell’s presence confessed that he had received sums of two thousand and of three thousand roubles for wrecking activities and he also admitted that he was actually engaged in the wrecking.

Nordwell replied that Labanoff’s statement was fantastic. Labanoff added that he was instructed not to wreck the Metro Vickers Company’s plant, but to devote his. attention to other companies’ plants, in the Ivanova district. Nordwell denied this.

As an example of the O.G.P.U. methods, Sir Esmond quotes the story of a Russian woman, who was instructed to persuade Monkhouse to undertake secret work. The woman refused. Another example of the O.G.P.U. methods is that the accused Cushny, in October last, was approached and was asked to undertake secret work unknown to his firm in connection with the supply of electrical plant for Soviet power stations, he being offered 250 dollars per month. Cushny refused. THIRD DEGREE METHODS. The strangest revelations refer to Thornton, who was born in Russia, and is generous by nature. He may, possibly, have been indiscreet in helping Russians. Mr Strang describes Thornton as worn out, he having been interrogated daily since his arrest, and on one occasion for twenty hours without a break. He was confronted by MacDonald, a fellow prisoner, who accused Thornton of engaging the military and economic spying. Thornton says that when his amazement began to embarrass MacDonald, the examiners made Thornton sit with his back to MacDonald, who “looked awful.”

Gustav, a friend of MacDonald, made similar statements when he was confronted with Thornton, saying that th© latter had been paid ten thousand roubles for espionage purposes.

Until Thornton had been released, the Ambassador (Sir E. Ovey), Mr Strang and Monkhouse believed that he had written extraordinary lengthy statements, covering practically every activity of Vickers Coy. during the decade. They presumed that severe gruelling had reduced Thornton to mental apathy. Mr Strang even suggested to Sir John Simon that Thornton had broken down and had made a false confession under well-known forms of O.G.P.U. pressure, and particularly a threat of the exposure of his alleged relations with Madame Kutosova, who is Secretary of the Company. Mr Strang’s last cable, after he had seen Thornton, however, reveals a different state of affairs. For two

days, Thornton’s examiners had tried to make him admit that he had received money from the British Consulate, and that he was a member of the Intelligence Service. He was then told that Madame Kutosova had testified to this effect. She confronted him, being evidently in a pitiable state of terror and she reeled off accusations against Thornton in a manner suggesting that she was acting under compulsion, after having been broken by usual threats regarding relatives.

LONDON PRESS OPINIONS. LONDON, April 11. “Amazing” is the most-used adjective in connection with the White Paper. The “Daily Express” says: The White Paper shows a tangle of lies, and third degree methods in which the Soviet authorities sought to enmesh the arrested British engineers. Even the small section of the Press which has been critical of the Government’s handling of the affair is obviously impressed with the latest disclosures. The White Paper is the chief news and carries the biggest headlines in all the newspapers, but there is little editorial comment, owing to the lateness of the hour of its issue. The “News Chronicle” says: If there is any substance in the charges, it now is almost impossible to discover it through a cloud of irrelevant, incredible suspicions. The prisoners appear to have been so broken by an inquisition that it is no longer possible to say what is the real worth of their testimony. MOSCOW PRESS SILENCE. (Recd. April 12, 10 a.m.) MOSCOW, April 11. There is nothing in to-day’s newspapers relating to the trial to-morrow. This is interpreted as the official desire to minimise possibility of crowds

of workers flocking to the courtroom in Nobles’ Hall, which has accommodation for 500. LARGE SUM OUTSTANDING. RUGBY, April 11. The gravest public impression was caused by the second White Paper, which disclosed inter alia, that the strong undercurrent of menaces during some of the examinations of Vickers’ engineers, was alternated with promises of lucrative employment in return for satisfactory answers. Moving the second reading of the Russian Imports Prohibition Bill, in the Lords, Lord Hailsham said that the Soviet owed Vickers at the end of last month, no less than a million and a-half sterling, and the company had every reason to expect a continuance of the contracts. The economic power conferred by the Bill was perhaps the only form of pressure the Government could use to protect British subjects who were in peril. COWARDLY TORTURE. LONDON, April 11. Sir Esmond Ovey and Sir John Simon listened to the Russia debate in the House of Lords. Lord Hailsham said that the Government had the right to demand that British subjects arrested in a foreign country should be tried by an impartial tribunal, and the evidence presented should be reliably obtained. The danger of the present case was that neither condition could operate. “Nothing could be more cruel and cowardly than the way the men arrested in Moscow have been tortured,” he said. The Soviet Minister of Justice had laid it down that the Courts were the organs of State power. Their duty was not to determine guilt, but to decide whether a conviction would be in the interests of the administration. Lord Passfield (Labour) suggested that the matter could have been better handled by friendly representations, instead of holding a machine-gun at the Soviet’s head. The Russian procedure was not half as bad as that practised in Poland and the United, States. Our own police had been guilty of much the same sort of treatment. Lord Buckmaster said that Lord Bassfield's utterance might be harmless before a debating society, but it was dangerous under the present circumstances. The Bill passed all its stages.