KIDNAPPED BRITONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23577, 10 February 1940, Page 12

KIDNAPPED BRITONS

PRISONERS OF GESTAPO ECHO OF VENLO INCIDENT [from ottr own correspondent] LONDON, Jan. 16 The first news for several weeks of Captain Stevens and Mr. Best, the British officers kidnapped near Venlo, on the Dutch side of the German frontier, by armed Gestapo agents on November 9, has reached Holland. The Berlin correspondent of the Amsterdam Telegraaf reports that so far as is known they are still confined in the Gestapo headquarters %in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse, in Berlin. Further "evidence" against them is being collected by the German authorities and it is expected that particulars will be published in Germany in due course.

It lias not yet been decided when the trial of Georg Elser, who is accused of'making the-Munich bomb attempt on Hitler's life, will be held. The British officers are, however, not likely to be charged with personal complicity in the plot. According to the Telegraaf's correspondent they will merely be accused of creating an organisation in Holland for arousing unrest in Germany and staging acts of sabotage with the aid of German "reactionary circles." Evidently Himmler, the German Chief of Police, has decided that he would only make a laughing stock of himself if he tried to fabricate any direct connection between the British officers . and the Munich bomb explosion. Captain Stevens was the chief British passport control officer at The Hague. Mr. Best had been representing British firms in Holland for 20 years. His wife was born in Holland.