LIBYA INCIDENT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 143, 2 June 1936, Page 8

LIBYA INCIDENT

Reported Brutal Treatment of Airmen OBJECTS OF DERISION By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright LONDON, June 1. The Foreign Office is investigating reports of brutal treatment of Captain Walter Rogers, a leading Imperial Airways pilot ,and his crew of three. The “Daily Herald’ ’says that Captain Rogers was flying a 38-seater from Hanno to Cairo. There being no passengers for the service in the Near Elast .they landed at Mesylam in Libya. They were immediately placed under armed guard, and all documents seized. The four men were quartered in an inadequate tent in the blazing sun, with armed native guards outside. It is alleged that Captain Rogers and the crew were afterwards paraded as objects of derision at bayonet point before Italian native troops. When, at Hanno, their papers were found to be perfectly in order, the Italians complained that the machine was seen flying over a prohibited military area, which is actually the route Italy chooses for British machines to follow. Captain Rogers afterwards was allowed to go to Cairo without explanation. The incident is all the more astonishing as the Italian Government, the Army and the Air Force are normally very friendly with British aviators.