ITALIAN FASCISTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25384, 16 November 1943, Page 5

ITALIAN FASCISTS

LEADERS AWAITING TRIAL (Rec. 0.15 a.m.) LONDON, Nov. 15. The Rome radio announced that Count Ciano, Signor Alfieri, and other members of the Fascist Grand Council concerned in the overthrow of Mussolini are imprisoned and awaiting trial. The Rome radio claimed that all the leaders opposing Mussolini except Count Grandi have been arrested.

The Allied Military Government of Naples and Campania during the last six weeks has removed 500 Italian mayors and officials with Fascist records. Military Government officials emphasised that this was only the beginning of the house cleaning. In retaliation for attacks against German soldiers, 100 prisoners from a concentration camp in Turin were either shot or hanged, reports the Associated Press correspondent on the Italian frontier.

Following the ambushing of their troops and the sabotage of telephones, the Germans .in Milan imposed a curfew and threatened to raze whole districts and shoot hundreds of hostages, says the Zurich correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. German patrols after 8 p.m. fii’e on anybody in the streets, and many have been killed in the last two nights. Armoured cars patrol the streets, and machine guns are permanently manned at street corners and at factories. In spite of these measures, sabotage continues, the latest act occurring at the Bianchi car factory, where a bomb explosion considerably damaged the machinery. The Zurich correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph says Mussolini’s Fascist Republican Government admits that attacks against German soldiers and Italian Fascists are increasing in spite of all the efforts to prevent them. At least 150 Germans and Fascists were killed last week. The Fascist Party has been forced to organise a security service, with 10,000 Italian volunteers who have been incorporated in the German Storm Troop groups.