DEATH PENALTY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22497, 14 August 1936, Page 11

DEATH PENALTY

TWO BEBEL OFFICEKS FIRING SQUAD FACED CLEMENCY REFUSED By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright BARCELONA, August 12 The Catalonian Cabinet, after a prolonged sitting, decided not to recommend clemency for the insurgents, Generals Goded and Burriel, sentenced to death by courtmartial for leading an abortive rising of the Barcelona garrison. Both officers were shot at dawn. Five hundred people, including officials and journalists, watched the execution. General Godcd wore his uniform, stripped of the insignia of rank, but General Burriel wore peasant clothes. The news was broken to the leaders at 1 a.m. that they must face the firing squad. General Burricl's wife and daughter boarded the vessel on which both men were imprisoned at 2.30 a.m. to say farewell. The condemned men were escorted ashore and marched into Mont Juich fortress as dawn was breaking. They stood with their backs to the wall, after refusing to have their eyes bandaged. Indeed General Goded smoked his last cigarette as he awaited death. The volley killed General Burriel instantly, but General Goded fell wounded, necessitating the firing of a final revolver shot by an officer.

Crowds iiled ;)ast - tho bodies crying "Viva la Republica." The rebel headquarters at Burgos previously had broadcast a threat that ,if tho Madrid Government did not commute the death sentences passed 011 tho two officers, all loyalist officers in tho custody of tho rebels would bo executed. BESIEGED IN FORTRESS SORRY PLIGHT OF REBELS REFUSAL TO SURRENDER MADRID, August 1 2 Jose Sanchez Garcia, aged 18, one of seven rebel soldiers who escaped from Alcazar fortress, Toledo, lias surrendered to the loyalists. Describing the conditions after three weeks' close siege, he says the fortress contains 1700 persons, including 100 soldiers and 700 Civil Guards, besides cadets, instructors, Fascists, women and children. Tho diet of these people is confined to horsoflesh, roasted wheat and water, the latter being rationed from two wells. A loud-speaker, installed by tho loyalist besiegers, daily broadcasts tho Government's warnings and emphasises the futility of resistance.

The besieged leaders declare that they will perish before they surrender, since it is a case of victory or death. SERVICES DECLINED CAMBRIDGE STUDENTS TURNED BACK AT FRONTIER LONDON, August 12 Nine Cambridge undergraduates, wearing red ties, starves and bulletproof jackets and carrying cases containing gas masks and ammunition belts, arrived on the Franco-Spanish border, at Cerbere, prepared to join the Government troops against the rebels. The frontier guards turned them back, pointing out that Britain did not wish her nationals to enter Spain owing to the risk of international complications.