MOSCOW TRIAL

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 104, 13 April 1933, Page 6

MOSCOW TRIAL

PROCEEDINGS OPEN RED SOLDIERS GUARD DOCK. SUMMARY OF INDICTMENT. LONDON, April 12. The Moscow trial began at noon. Two Red soldiers with fixed bayonets guarded the dock and a dozen soldiers stood on a platform. Nine lawyers sat together and the public rose as the judges j who were ordinary army men dressed in mufti, entered the Court. The Foreign Office has issued a long summary of the indictment against the Vickers British-Russian employees charging them with counter-revolution, ary activities, the damaging of plant in order to undermine Soviet industry and weaken the Soviet State, the collecting and utilising of secret information of military and State importance and the bribing of employees of State electricity stations in connection with their counter-revolutionary wrecking activities. The expert commission appointed to study the documents reported that the breakdowns were due to criminal neglect or deliberate wrecking. EARLIER “WEECKER” TRIALS GUILT DECIDED IN ADVANCE (“Times” Cable) LONDON, April 11. “Tho Times” Riga correspondent recalls that all former “wrecker” trials were based on prisoners’ confessions secured by the Ogpu web, implicating all the accused. When tne prisoners showed an inclination to deny the confessions a night spent in the Ogpu cells resulted in an alteration of attitude He adds that the alleged wrecker trials are not trials in the ordinary sense, but a public demonstration of guilt, winch is officially decided and proclaimed in advance. While the Court and even the defending counsel were ranged on the side of the prosecution at the time when the two defence barristers at the Shaknintinsky trial in 1928 broke the harmony with attempted pleas of innocence of the accused, Vishinsky, who was then judge, ordered tneir immediate arrest and trial for collusion in a plot relating to disloyalty to the Soviet. Mr W. Strang will attend the trial. Members of the Embassy staff and a stenographer will also be present. MRS MONKHOUSE’S FEELINGS LAST TALK WITH HUSBAND LONDON, April 11. Mrs Monkhouse, wife of the arrested engineer, who is Irving IS nertt irilshire, had a last talk with her husband in Moscow before the trial. He said that he was not allowed to refer to the trial, but spoke to her about his will and all arrangements in case of ... . Mrs Monkhouse was unable to finish the sentence. She said that she ha ll been married 20 years and had a girl 1b and a boy 12. She was not disturbed about the Soviet suggestions concerning her husband. He was incapable of deceit. Madame Kutosova, the secretary mentioned in the White Paper, was her friend. She added that she had a visa, and was ready to go to Moscow, but her husband had said that her presence would cause him anxiety and embarrassment. “So I am waiting. I have wept for a fortnight and I do not weep any more. He asked, me to keep calm. I do not believe they will shoot him, but if they can arrest, they can shoot. What can I do.” MONKHOUSE’S MOTHER MOVEMENTS IN NEW ZEALAND Mrs Monknouee, mother of Mr Alan Monkhouse, one of the Metro Vickers engineers who is awaiting trial in Moscow, is staying with Mrs (Dr) Walter Sanders at Raglan. She left this week for Wanganui on a visit to another of her sons,'Mr Wilfred Monkhouse, a teacher at tho Friends’ School in that town. Mrs Monkhouse has lived in England for the past 25 years, and returned to New Zealand recently on a visit. She is to sail again for England in August. Her son, Alan, was at one time an electrical engineer in the Dominion, but for 20 years ho has lived off and on in Russia, being for the past five years business head of the firm of Metro Vickers in Russia.