FOUND GUILTY OF SABOTAGE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18007, 12 July 1928, Page 9

FOUND GUILTY OF SABOTAGE.

Six Sentences Commuted. RESULT OF DONETZ TRIAL. (United Press Association—By Elecftrle Telegraph Oojiyrljrht.) MOSCOW, July 10. The death sentences on the Donetz convicteds, Matoff, Bratanovisky, Berezovsky, Boyarshinoff, Ivazarinoff and Shadhm have been commuted to ten years’ imprisonment.' The' remaining five sentences will be carried cut to-day. BOMBING EPISODE. ONE GUARD KILLED. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph —Copyright.) (Received July 11, 8.15 p.m.) MOSCOW, July 11. The bombing of the headquarters of the hated Ogpu, the successor to Cheka, where the Donetz prisoners aa, confined, is reluctantly admitted by th» Tass agency, which states that one of the guard was killed and two were injured, but the loss of life is believed to be higher. The bomb was thrown into the office where passes into the building are issued.

According to a Soviet account, the terrorists were two White Guards, who came from Paris aided l>y a Rumanian espipnage service. One named Radkevitch was killed, but the other, who is unnamed, was arrested at a village near Moscow. Unusual mass arrests of suspects of anti-Bolshevism followed. DELIBERATE OUTRAGE. TO PREJUDICE CONVICTED MEN. (United Press Association-—By Eleetrlo Telegraph—Copyright.) (Received July 11, 9.45 p.ih.) BERLIN, July 11. It is believed that the Moscow explosion was not connected with the White Guards, but was deliberately caused by secret police to create an atmosphere unfavourable to the reprieve of those convicted at the Donetz trial.

[Six German engineers were arrested on March 11 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-revolutionary conspiracy, which they alleged was being financed from British and PoiiJi 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 1 off the German Ambassador, Herr Brockdor Fantzau, . 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.]