The highest court of Manchukuo today ordered a new trial for four former Czarist army officers convicted and sentenced to death in June for complicity in the kidnaping and murder in 1933 of Simon Kaspi, a young Jewish musician of French citizenship.
Those sentenced to death were Martinoff, Chandier, Zaitsev-Sinitza and Kiritchenko. Two other White Guardists had been sentenced to life imprisonment. The trial lasted for seven weeks.
Counsel for the defendants declared during the trial that extortion of money from Jews was no crime because their money actually belonged to the Russian people. The counsel charged that Kaspi was a secret agent of the Communist International and held that the defendants wished to use his money to fight the Bolsheviks.
The Charbinskoye Vrenya, one of Harbin’s two anti-Semitic newspapers had collected subscriptions among Russian emigres in Harbin to petition the emperor of Manchukuo to annul the verdict.
Russian Fascists made the verdict a springboard for a new anti-Semitic drive. The newspaper, Nash Put, was confiscated an hour after it had appeared with an attack on the decision. Police took a list of its subscribers.
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