MURDER OF TUNISIAN BANKER.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 133, 11 July 1914, Page 3

MURDER OF TUNISIAN BANKER.

SON SENTENCED TO TWENTY YEARS IN GAOL. ' Mohammed Ben Ramdan, a'Tunisian banker, manufacturer, and farmer, worth nearly half a million sterling, was leaving the Cafe do la Paix one evening last October, when a bearded man, who was following him, suddenly drew a revolver and shot him dead. The murderer, who was at once arrested, proved to be the victim's son. His beard was false.

Mohammed Ron Ramdan, for he bears the same name as his father, was last month sentenced to 20 years' penal servitude. . He declared that his deed was unpremeditated. His father had refused to see him, and he had put on a false beard in order to be able to get near him and makea last appeal to him for help. "My father/' he explained, "deprived me of a legacy of one-third of his fortune, left me by my grandfather." But he failed to furnish proofs of his assertion, Mohammed Ben Ramdan had repeatedly helped himself from his father's cash-box, and had been forgiven again and again. One day\he endeavoured by fraud to obtain his father's signature to aalOU for £40,000. On another occasion he charged his father with murder, and finally, when driven from his father's house, he began to forge cheques, one of which was on a London bank for upwards of £2OOO.

The defence tried to east a slur on the murdered man f s memory. He was addicted, it was pleaded, to drinking .-.uisette, a liqueur forbidden by the Koran.

Mohammed Ben Brahirn, the uncle of the accused, dressed in dazzling Arab costume, declared ht the father was harsh towards his family*