Frenchwoman On Trial; Alleged Betrayals

Wanganui Chronicle, 7 January 1949, Page 5

Frenchwoman On Trial; Alleged Betrayals

(N.Z.P.A.—Special Correspondent) LONDON, Jan. 6 (Recd. 6pm).—The trial has opened in Paris of Mathilde Carre, a 40-year-old Frenchwoman, who is charged with betraying 35 members of the French Resistance Movement to the Germans while acting as liaison officer in London between British Intelligence and Resistance groups in France. The prosecution alleged that Carre, after being captured by the Germans early in the war, formed an attachment for a member of the German Counter-Intelligence Service, and was sent by him to act as a spy in Britain. Posing as a member of the Resistance Movement, she was taken to London, where she worked for four months in the War Office. She was arrested by the British authorities after they became suspicious of her activities, and she spent three years in Holloway prison until the end: of the war, when she was handed over to the French. She spent another three years in French prisons while the case against her was being prepared. Carre’s husband, an officer in the French Army, was killed fighting with the Allied forces against the Germans at Cassino.