THE GREEK EXECUTIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18279, 21 December 1922, Page 9

THE GREEK EXECUTIONS.

APPALLING DETAILS.

DYING PREMIER'S ORDEAL.

BODIES FLUNG INTO MUD.

By Tcicsraph—Press Association—Copyright.

(Received 8.5 p.m.)

A. and N.Z

LONDON. Dec. 19.

A special correspondent of the Daily Express, in a despatch from Athens, reveals barbarous horrors that attended the recent executions of Ministers, disclosure of which had been previously prevented by the military censorship. After the trial the Revolutionary Committee sat until three o'clock in the ntorning debating whether the death sentences should be executed. When tie decision was made it was carried out swiftly. M. (lounaris was taken from hospital on a stretcher and motored to a place one and a-half miles outsido the city, where 'lie wjs left on the stretcher in i dying state while the motor-van went hack to fetch five other prisoners. One of them died of heart failure in the van. but lie was propped up with the others.

M. Gounaris received injections of strychnine to strengthen his heart to enable him to stand up in front of the firing party. The Ministers were then asked if they had anything to say, but not one replied.

The order to fire was given, and the moment the Ministers fell the firing party rushed forward and emptied their revolvers into the corpses, including that of the man who had died on the way. The bodies were then thrown into a lorry and taken to the public cemetery and flung in a heap on the muddy ground. Relatives later were given half an hour to fetch the bodies, otherwise they would be thrown in a pauper's grave. In one case the widow was not notified, so she was unable to rescue her husband's body. Other mourners had to pull the heap of bodies o«part to find their dead, which could hardly be recognised because of the mud that covered them.