AVENGING DENSHAWAI.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14301, 22 February 1910, Page 5

AVENGING DENSHAWAI.

EGYPTIAN PREMIER SHOT.

ANOTHER STUDENT MARTYR.

By Telegraph.—Press Association.— l

(Received February 21, 10 p.m.)

Cairo, February 21. Just outside the Foreign Office in Cairo to-day, Wardany, a Mahommedan student, fired five shots at and seriously wounded Boutrous Pasha Ghali, the Egyptian Premier, who has been removed to the hospital.

Wardany acted as secretary to the recent congress of the Young Egyptian party at Geneva, and in his pockets a quantity of nationalist literature was found. He declares that he desired to avenge the Denshawai affair, and the prolongation of the Suez concession.

THE , DENSHAWAT PRISONER?. I There is in England a considerable body of educated opinion in favour of terminating the terribly .severe, sentences passed on the Egyptian villagers concerned in the assault ou certain British officers at Derishawai some two or three years ago. The latest attempt to secure this end, however, failed of its purpose, for in reply to ail influential petition Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Minister, . replied that he could not at present add to the statements which he made when the Denshawai affair was discureed in Parliament. The petition was signed by such well-known people as Lord Coleridge, Dr. Clifford, Mr. Frederic Harrison, General Sir William Butler, Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. George Meredith, Mr. R. B. Cunninghame Graham. Professor Gilbert Murray, Mr. Alfred Bussel Wallace, and Mr. H. G. Wells, to mention only a few of those who appended their names. The petitioners contended that the impression under which public opinion was reconciled to the Denshawai sentences had been completely changed by the publication- of the official papers. -These papers proved that the affair had no political or religious significance, and that " nothing had happened that might not have been expected in any British village if a shooting party of foreigners, ignorant of our language and customs, had begun to shoot the domestic animals and farm stock, under the impression that they were ferae naturae. The petitioners .added that the tribunal which awarded the sentences of hanging (4). flogging f8), penal servitude for life (2), and a number of shorter sentences, including one for 15 years, was constituted in a manner altogether repugnant to British practice, in that there was no jury. The hangings and floggings were unfortunatelv irre- j vocable, but every day's delav in releasing | the other prisoners, who had now served j more than two years, "creates an impression unfavourable to the Foreign Office , and to British justice in Egypt."