ON TRIAL FOR SABOTAGE

Taranaki Daily News, 26 June 1928, Page 11

ON TRIAL FOR SABOTAGE

SOVIET CHARGES GERMANS SENSATION OF DONETZ MINES. EVIDENCE OF MISMANAGEMENT. By Telegraph—Press Assn —Copyright. Received June 25, 8.15 p.m. Times. London, June 25. The first stage of the trial of six German engineers arrested by the Soviet secret police on charges of sabotage at the Donetz mines has been concluded, states the Riga correspondent of the, Times. It consisted of the evidence and cross-examination of the accused. The remainder of the trial will be held in camera. The proceedings thus far have produced convincing evidence not of a plot but merely of mismanagement. Nevertheless the opinion in Moscow is that after such a stir somebody must die. The German mechanic Maier, like many Russians, denied a statement signed by him before the trial, alleging that the’questioners reduced him to exhaustion, subjecting him sometimes to uninterrupted interrogation for six or seven hours, after which he did not know what be signed. WORK OF SOVIET SECRET POLICE. CRUSHING ALLEGED CONSPIRACY. The engineers were arrested on March II at Donetz, in the Don Basin coal region of Russia, for alleged acts of sabotage in the mines. The Soviet secret police asserted that the arrested men were responsible for explosions and fires as part of a widespread counter-revo-lutionary conspiracy, which they allege was being financed from British and Polish sources. The German Foreign Office" lodged a protest with the Moscow Government against the arrest of the engineers. It was reported from Moscow on March 12 that the Soviet’s Foreign Commissar, Tchitcherin, had put off the German Ambassador, Herr Brockdor Frantzau, with the mere statement that legitimate suspicion existed that the arrested men were engaging in sabotage. In Russia that amounts to high treason and involves the trial of offenders at the Supreme Court. The employers of the arrested men, including the famous General Electrical Company of Germany, declared the charge to be preposterous. It was also reported from Moscow that the President of the Soviet Union, Rykoff, said it had not been suggested that German or British firms mixed themselves in such things, but it had been established that their representatives were implicated in Hie plot. According to the Higa correspondent of the Times the disclosures of this alleged plot was sprung upon tho Soviet Government by a section of the Communists in their excessive zeal on behalf of the secret police. The extent of the Soviet Government unpreparedness, which resulted in a clumsy explanation, was shown, said the correspondent, by a Soviet news-sheet containing the official announcement of the plot.

The ncws-s|ieet also contained some unccnsorcd pages on which it was stated that tho Government did not blame the foreign engineers for the failure of mining in the district, but attributed it to the incapacity and negligence of the managers and officials in the Don Basin, and to the prevalence of drunkenness. The correspondent said the drunkenness referred to was due to the State’s vodka monopoly. He quoted a letter written by one of the miners in which the latter said: “The Don Basin is flooded with vodka. Not a single day passes without attacks with knives or murders. Not more than*Bo to 40 men go to work on Mondays, nor for some days after Jirdidays. "'The correspondent said another miner asserted that 30 truck leads of vodka were consumed last year, and that 20 had already been drunk this year. This drinking caused tlie wholesale destruction of buildings by arson and a great loss of money. According to an explanation from Moscow on March 15 the arrests of the German engineers were owing to the discovery of an alleged conspiracy to effect the economic, if not the political, independence of Ukrainia, in which German and Ukrainian industrial interests j were supposed to be collaborating. It was claimed that the Soviet’s action was taken to achieve two objects, namely, the checking of the separatist movement and the overawing of industrialists generally. On the same day it was announced from Berlin. that the German Government had broken off the treaty negotiations with the Soviet [lending the clearing up of the incident at Donetz. The Foreign Minister, Herr Stresemann, instructed the German Ambassador to Russia to demand an explanation, also that facilities be given for an interview with the accused men. Herr Stresemann’s decision was supported throughout the country. As a result three engineers were released and it was said the other three would bo set free shortly. The German Government demanded safeguards against a recurrence of such treatment before it would consider whether commercial negotiations with Russia should be resumed.