The Manchukuoan Court of Appeals has reversed death and life imprisonment sentences imposed on six Russian White Guardists for the kidnaping of Simon Kaspi, a Jewish musician, in the Autumn of 1935. Kaspi was tortured and killed.
All the defendants were acquitted. Four of them had faced death penalties, and two life terms at hard labor. Revision of the trial was obtained through the aid of the White Guardist colony here and Japanese Fascists. Jewish circles were disturbed by the reversal.
Those who had been sentenced to death were former Czarist army officers named Martinoff, Chandler, Zaitsev-Sinitza and Kirotchenko. After a seven week trial, a revision was ordered last July by the Mandukuoan high court.
Counsel for the defendants declared during the original trial that extortion of money from Jews was no crime because the money actually belonged to the Russian people. The counsel charged that Kaspi, a French citizen, was a secret agent of the Communist International, and held the defendants wished to use the proceeds of the extortion to fight the Bolsheviks.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
