REICHSTAG TRIAL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 255, 25 September 1933, Page 7

REICHSTAG TRIAL.

SENSATIONS COMMENCE. PRISONERS’ SPIRITED PLEAS. LEIPZIG, Sept. 23. More pale and apathetic than ever, Van der Lubbe, through refusal of food, looked in danger of collapse at the Reichstag fire trial. Consequently, at counsel’s request, a doctor sat alongside him. There was a dramatic moment when Dimitroff, one of the accused, was cross-examined. Ho said ho had seen reports that he had been sentenced to death in Bulgaria in absentia for leading an armed band after having been previously given a life sentence in connection with the insurrection of 1927. Dimitroff heatedly protested the injustice of the rejection of five lawyers lie nominated. Dimitrova provided sensation after sensation. Sometimes he addressed the Court like a political meeting, continually gesticulating and often shouting. He denounced the police methods of investigation, causing the Judge to explode with anger and threaten to exclude Dimitrova from the rest of the trial if he did not behave himself.

Charged with discrepancies between to-day’s testimony and his preliminary examination, Dimitrova denounced the examination as mendacious because the police wanted “to frame me up as an incendiary.” The President angrily interjected: “I repudiate that.” Popoff, in a quiet, high-pitched voice, soberly dressed in black, provided a striking contrast to Dimitroff. He answered easily and suavely. Ho admitted joining the Bulgarian Communists at the age of twenty, but denied that he had been prosecuted. He had not participated in armed insurrection. A Ileisig police official, who examined Van der Lubbe after the fire, said lie freely admitted firing the Reichstag to awaken the workers to revolt; he said he was willing to abide by the consequences. Torgler’s wife told journalists that she was sure her husband would be fairly tried.