SAILOR’S STORY OF TORTURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22398, 20 October 1934, Page 22

SAILOR’S STORY OF TORTURE

ALLEGED KIDNAPPING. A story told to the New York police recently by a French sailor of having been held prisoner for four weeks and tortured with burning cigarettes led to a raid being made, which the authorities believe to have resulted in the capture of the ringleader of a powerful international drug ring. The sailor, whose name is Rosen, was a member of the crew of the French liner Champlain. He told the police that he was met on arrival at New York lately by a man named Salvatore Mancuso, who asked him what had happened to a package containing £I6OO worth of heroin which was concealed in one of the ship’s ventilators. Rosen had thrown it overboard, but stated that he had sold it. Rosen was immediately seized and dragged to a house where he was bound hand and foot, while lighted cigarettes were applied to his forehead, wrists, and soles' of his feet to make him cable to his wife at Havre asking her to send money. Eventually, Mancuso released him.