TWO YEARS IN A CAGE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 15 April 1908, Page 4

TWO YEARS IN A CAGE.

Carried on shore at the port of Antwerp, a sick man asked his bearers to set him down that he might kiss the soil of Belgium. It was Kdward Joris, the Belgian, vlio sentenced to death two years ago <m aii accusation of having attempted tli.' life of the Sultan, hat just beea iv.nwed to his friends by the protests >'-'f t!it ; Belgian authorities." Juris has been well-known in Antwerp as a labour leader, but few of Ins friends could recognise him in the aged and broken man who has corao horn? to his old mother's house. He was arrested after the throwing of the bomb which killed two bystanders and wounded the chief of tha Turkish detective service just as Abdul Hnmid was leaving a mosque. Tried and sentenced on the false evidence of a spy, Joris was only saved from death by the fact that lie was a furtign subject whose Government was rjaily (3 take up his case. To a London "Evening News" correspondent hs told something of bis terrible two years' detention. "I was under examination," he said "for twenty consecutive hours betore magistrates who tried to force a confession from me. They tried to bre.iV my Fpirit by saying that my wife h:icl b.vn killed in the explosion, showing ma ■a rag from the dress s' c wore, but I - kn.'W t'.is to hs a He. " "When they failed, the gendarmes - were ordered to take me 'to a place from which I should never return.' '"In the prison of Besh^ktisn I sjvent three flays lying on tha harp, and damp floor. .. Yet I was better off than the Ti.rkish ■ suspects, one of whom >vas burned after methylated spirit hfcd been poured over Him, another disembowelled himself with a piece of tin to escape torture. "Afterwards I was kept, in a sort of wooden cage, guarded day and night by gaolers, who would not utter a word in mv presence. "My food was bread with foul water, and during all these two years clothes. and linen were never changed. I suppose th.'V wanted m: to die, since they did not' dare to tarry out my sentence of death. "Aft?r twelve months in that cage, I heard of the explosion of another bomb in the city ,for the officials'came t> me and cross-examined me severely ivor an affair in which a man cut on from the world could have no part," I .