Judah Stern and Sergei Vasiliev have both been sentenced to death.
The verdict was handed down at 5.30 this morning.
When Stern was asked whether he had anything to say before sentence was passed, he refused to speak.
The outstanding point in to-day’s proceedings was Stern’s determined refusal to acknowledge his own signatures under the documents containing what purport to be statements made by him during the investigations, and his insistence that all the statements ascribed to him in these documents, especially those taken by the G.P.U., were obtained by what he called “non-European methods”.
On being asked what he meant by “non-European manners”, he declined to say.
Stern repeated to-day that he had shot at the German Embassy automobile on his own initiative and that he had never been incited to do so by Vasiliev.
Vasiliev, on the other hand, declared again to-day that he had incited Stern to kill the German Ambassador.
I decline to be defended, Stern said at the midnight session, when Krylenko, the Chief Soviet Public Prosecutor, concluded a two-hours’ speech, in which he demanded the death sentence for both the accused.
Krylenko described Vasiliev as a strong-minded conspirator, but referred to Stern as a mentally defective, who must, however, be executed, he added, because he had attempted to involve the Soviet in international complications.
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