POLITICAL MURDER IN RUMANIA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 29 April 1937, Page 7

POLITICAL MURDER IN RUMANIA

IRON GUARDS SENTENCED LIFE IMPRISONMENT [United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright] BUCHAREST, 27th April. Eight members of the Iron Guard j were sentenced to imprisonment for life for the murder of Dr. Stelescu on 16th July, 1936. Two others were sentenced to imprisonment for ten years. A cablegram received from Bucharest last July reported that, with shouts of "Traitor, you are to die at 8 o'clock,” Storm Troopers belonging to the Iron Guard broke into the surgical ward of a hospital where Dr. Stelescu, a former member of the Chamber of Deputies and founder of the Crusaders’ League, had just performed an operation for appendicitis. Sbine of them riddled him with 28 revolver bullets, and the others kept off the staff at the poiht of the resolver. Thirty other Storm Troopers aWaiting them in the street cheered when they were told that the so-called execution had been carried out Eight of them then marched lo the police station and surrendered. !

Dr. Stelescu was orgininaliy a prominent member of the Iron Guard, which he left following the assassination of the Premier, M. Toca, in 1933, and formed his own Fascist movement, whereupon he was placed on the Iron Guards’ “death list.” Hitherto he had been closely guarded by followers, but the precautions lessened when he went to the hospital.