TO GAOL FOR LIFE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20273, 6 April 1934, Page 1

TO GAOL FOR LIFE.

I Assassination of Rumanian Premier. THREE MEN SENTENCED. United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received April 6, 12.30 p.m.) BUCHAREST, April 5. Nicholas Constantinescu, Caranicu and Belimace were sentenced to life penal servitude for complicity in the assassination of M. Duca. Fifty others were acquitted. Dr lon Duca, Liberal Prime Minister of Rumania, was assassinated on December 29 after leaving the Royal Palace at Sinaia, where he had been received by King Carol. Dr Duca was waiting at the station for a train to return to Bucharest when a young man, who had been standing on the platform with two companions, threw a smoke bomb among the group of people who were with the Premier. Dr Duca wheeled round sharply and saw a young man—one of the bombthrower’s companions—advancing towards him with a revolver in his hand. The Prime Minister calmly raised his hat with his left hand and made the sign of the Cross with his right hand. As he did so, four shots rang out, and the statesman fell, with blood poi.ring from his mouth. Hp had been shot through the lungs. One of the Premier’s companions, Dr Costinescu. a member of the Rumanian Parliament, was wounded I '-- one of the j-uile' - As soon as King Carol hea*- 1 the tragic news sent 1 ? s car t j the station, and the dving Premier was raced back to the Royal Palace and laid in the king’s own bed. King Carol himself rendc jd what rtlp ht could, and it was in the king’s arms that Dr Duca died, with the words, “ I die for my country ” on his lips. A twenty-three-year-old student named Nicholas Constantinescu was the assassin. With his two companions, he was arrested, and it was with difficulty that the crowd which gathered at the station were restrained from inching him. “I only wanted my country,” Constantinescu declared when he was arrested. Dr Duca had frequently been threatened with assassination, but he treated the threats lightly. He remarked not long before: “We all have to meet death, and when it comes to my turn I hope I shall die as a Christian and a gentleman.”