Brutal Treatment Of British Officer

Northern Advocate, 25 May 1936, Page 5

Brutal Treatment Of British Officer

(United Press Association.-By Electric Telegraph. — Copyright .l v (Received 2 p.m.) LONDON, May 24. inpHE Foreign Office has received news that Warrant-Officer L. B. Bunner, attached to the British ambulance unit in Abyssinia, who was arrested and detained at Diredawa, has now been released. He is at Djibouti undergoing treatment for rabies. S Warrant-Officer Bunner related a remarkable tale of official brutality to “The Times” correspondent.

He was passing his luggage through the customs at Diredawa on May 15, preparatory to boarding the train, he said, when he was told that the police commandant doubted his identity. The British consul, Mr Roy Chap-man-Andrews, interviewed an Italian general on Warrant-Officer Bunner’s behalf, and returned to Harrar, believing all was well, but WarrantOfficer Bunner was arrested on entering the train on May 16.

Denounced By Boy.

He was cross-examined for three hours through an interpreter by • a staff colonel, staff and an intelligence officer, Captain Lucetti, in

Italians Fake Evidence Against Red Cross Official

the presence of squads of police. A 10-year-old Abyssinian boy denounced him as Rudolph Brunner, an Austrian captain and chief of the Abyssinian intelligence service, as if such an organisation were conceivable.

Warrant-Officer Banners personal documents were examined. His passport had preceded him to Djibouti but his Red Cross identification papers were given so little credence that his passport would hardly have fared better. Captain Lucetti pretending to fire a pistol at his own head, declared that it was a matter of life and death, , adding significantly, “tomorrow.”

The tribunal refused to call in Mr Chapman-Andrews, declaring that he was consul only to Haile Selassie and no longer enjoyed diplomatic status. The remainder of the hearing was carried on in Italian, and was not interpreted. Daring Escape.

Warrant-Officer Bunner.was refused a bed and blankets, and was marched to the prison, namely a small incinerator, where he had to sleep on the floor. He was again questioned on May 17. Making a daring escape,' he left the incinerator at, midnight on May 18, scaling a 20-ft. wall while the guard courted Ethiopian women. He walked out of Diredawa barefooted, since it was impossible to climb the wall in his boots. He tramped for three days _• through a storm along the railway line to Djibouti and, was two days without water. He bought sand shoes from a Somali. He found further progress impossible and returned to Diredawa, where he collapsed in a vomiting fit in a native hut, whose owner reported the presence of a sick foreigner to. the authorities.

Meanwhile, Mr Chapman-Andrews was insisting on an inquiry. War-rant-Officer Banner was finally allowed to depart with otner Red Cross members, but his films and documents remain in the possession of the Italians, whose feeble attempts to pretend that he had tried to smuggle out dollars broke down when an officer at the station admitted that it was a deliberate fake.

“The Times” correspondent has informed the British authorities at Djibouti of all the circumstances.