SPYING DENIED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21640, 4 November 1933, Page 11

SPYING DENIED

NAZI ALLEGATION RELEASED JOURNALIST DUE IN LONDON TO-DAY CABINET CONSIDERS CASE COLLEAGUES' SYMPATHY By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received November 3, 8.5 p.m.) LONDON. Nov. 2 Mr. Noel Panter, the Daily Telegraph's Munich correspondent, who was released from gaol and expelled from Germany after his arrest for alleged treason or espionage, is due in London on Saturday. Interviewed after his release Mr. Panter said ho had signed a paper agreeing to leave Germany within 48 hours, failing which he would bo arrested again. In tho last three days of his imprisonment ho was not allowed to leave his cell which was next door to that which Herr Hitler occupied after the Nazi putsch of 1923. Throughout the interrogations to which Mr. Panter was subjected he denied that he was a spy or ever had seen the military service.

" All the questions indicated that I was suspected of espionage," said Mr. Panter. " I emphasised that always I had acted solely and simply as a journalist. I refused to disclose the sources of my information saying that was tho concern of the Daily Telegraph."

The whole of the circumstances of Mr. Panter's detention and release are under consideration by the British Government according to a British official wireless message. The Foreign Press Association, with the Exception of the German members of the committee—who opposed the action and withdrew prior to the vote—passed a resolution reaffirming that since liberty of the press is the basis of journalistic work, journalists' individual liberty should he safeguarded. Therefore the association sympathises with Mr. Tanter.