SHOT WHILE ESCAPING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25305, 16 August 1943, Page 3

SHOT WHILE ESCAPING

NOTORIOUS ITALIAN FASCIST AUSTRALIAN OFFICER’S STORY (Rec, 9.10 p.m.) MELBOURNE, Aug. 15. Amerigo Dumini, who organised the murder of Matteotti, the Italian antifascist leader, in 1924, was shot deadin Libya two years ago, and the official Rome News Agency report of his arrest at the direction of Marshal Badoglio is a fake. This declaration has been made by an Australian army officer who claims to have shot Dumini at Derna during the retreat from Benghazi to Tobruk in April, 1941. “ I was captain in charge of the company that had been left at Derna to guard 400 Italian war prisoners, together with Dumini, who had been arrested by the British authorities and kept in gaol,” states the officer. “ Dumini was awaiting trial for espionage and for the murder of British subjects. When I told Dumini I was going to take him back to Tobruk with us he made a rush for the door. We struggled. He broke free. I drew my service pistol and called on him to halt as he was bolting for the door.

“Dumini,” added the officer, “was known to be a dangerous character, and was suspected of being the leading Gestapo agent in Libya. He lived in a palatial home, with a host of servants, and had his private plane, with his own landing ground. He spoke English fluently, and before his arrest had been entertaining British officers.”

An Australian war correspondent back from the Middle East says that Dumini was a man one could never mistake. His left hand was badly maimed as the result of a dagger injury received in the initiation ceremony by which he became a member of the Mafia Secret Society.