NEW ZEALANDER CHARGED WITH GUN RUNNING

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 April 1949, Page 5

NEW ZEALANDER CHARGED WITH GUN RUNNING

(Rec. 11.40 a.m.) BALBOA, April 26.

Maurice Keith Berry, a New Zealand journalist and a former member of the staff of the-Panama American, has been detained at San Jose, Costa Rica, at the request of the Panamanian Government on a charge of gunrunning. His extradition to Panama may be sought with Hollis O’Hanlon, an American sea captain, who also has been detained. The Panamanian Minister of Justice alleges that they landed arms from Costa Rica on the Panamanian coast on April 17 to support the revolution led by a former President of Panama, Dr Harmodio Arias, who is now in gaol, and his son Robert. The Arias family owns the Panama American.

The Minister of Justice alleges that Berry and O’Hanlon loaded arms at Punta- barracks on April 15 and unloaded them two days later in a cove near Chiriqui, on the North Panama coast. He said the revolutionaries planned to invade Chiriqui province from the sea, seize the town of David, sack the provincial bank and buy more arms abroad with the proceeds of the raid. They then aimed to raise a revolt throughout the country. Dr Arias was President of Panama from 1932 to 1936. He is a brother of Dr Arnulfo Arias, the Revolutionary Party’s unsuccessful candidate for the Costa Rica Presidency in the elections in 1948, who afterward fled to Panama.

The New Zealand Embassy in Washington says it knows nothing about either Berry or another New Zealand journalist, identified only as Ted Scott, now living in Costa Rica, who the Panama authorities believe was also implicated. Reuter’s San Jose correspondent says that the only further information at present available on Berry is that he is aged 22. He adds that no action has been taken against Scott, who was also formerly employed by the Panama American.

Keith Berry is a former Wellington journalist. After service in Japan he joined the staff of the Evening Post and left New Zealand in August, 1947, in company with another young Wellington journalist, lan Cross, formerly of the Dominion, for Panama with the intention of going to Brazil. According to advice received in Wellington, Cross recently left Panama for the United States.