CONSPIRACY CHARGES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27038, 24 March 1949, Page 7

CONSPIRACY CHARGES

AMERICAN COMMUNISTS INFRINGEMENT OF RIGHTS CLAIMED N ZP A—Copyright

Rec. 9.25 p.m. NEW YORK, Mar. 22. Defence counsel, Mr Harry Sacher, said at the trial of the 11 Communist leaders to-day that the prosecution had raised the issue of Marxism and Leninism as “ the bogeyman.” The defendants are charged with conspiring to teach and advocate the violent overthrow of the United States Government.

Mr Sacher said the defendants, who are members of the Communist Party National Board, had done nothing more than exercise their constitutional rights of freedom of speech, press, and assembly. He said the indictments against the defendants charged only that they "talked, published books, and held meetings ” thus exercising the rights guaranteed by the first Constitutional Amendment. Mr Sacher said the chief aim of the platform adooted by the defendants in reconstituting the Communist Party in 1945 had been influencing the American people to oppose war.

Mr A. J. Isserman, another defence counsel, said there was not a line in the Communist Party, 1945 convention resolutions about force or violence. He claimed the defendants were indicted because they believed in new ideas in politics. The charge that they sought to overthrow the Government by force was “ unthinkable, untrue, never hapoened, and could not have happened. He contended that the trial issue was not the right of the defendants to teach Marxist and Leninist principles, it was the right of the American people to hear them.