DEFIANCE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 14 April 1927, Page 5

DEFIANCE.

MENACED MUSSOLINI. ZANIBONI PROM HIS CAJTE. URGES DIRECT ACTION. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. LONDON, April 12. “The Times’s’’ Rome correspondent telegraphs that Zaniboni’s dramatic confession marked the resumption of the trial. He spoke loudly and defiantly, and expressed no regrets. He said he realised that the Fascist regime was getting stronger, and eould be overthrown only by direct action. Zaniboni failed to organise direct action, and decided to act alone. He fixed a date, bought a rifle with which he practised daily to ensure killing Mussolini, “and would have done so if the police had not arrested me.’’ “I do not blame these poor devils,” he said, pointing to the cage, “I alone am responsible.” The hearing was adjourned.

In November, 1925, on the occasion of the Armistice celebration in Rome, the police discovered, just before Signor Mussolini was about, to go out on to the balcony of the Chigi Palace to address a large crowd which had assembled, that a former Socialist deputy named Zaniboni was in a hotel opposite, with a rifle trained on the balcony. The wouldbe assassin was arrested two hours before the Prime Minister was due to appear. He was dressed in the uniform of a major. A cable, yesterday, stated: Confined in a grim, iron cage, with a great military display inside and outside the Court, Tito Zaniboni, an exdeputy and a hero of the war., faced a military tribunal, charged with attemptt ing to shoot the Prime Minister. With Zaniboni in the cage were nine alleged accomplices. These included Lieuten-ant-General Luigi Capello, who commanded the Second Italian Army in the war.