LONDON, Jan. 4 (U.P.) — The Morocco radio tonight quoted an announcement from General Henri Honore Giraud’s headquarters that an unspecified number of “native” parachutists, dropped in North Africa from German planes, had been executed for trying to swing local populations to the Axis cause. [Vichy North Africa had only recently gone over to the Allies -ed.]
The “fifth column” chutists found “only rare complicity,” the announcement said.
“The natives and their accomplices have all been arrested and executed immediately after court-martial,” it continued. “Military authorities contributed efficiently to the arrest of these enemy agents.
“Large rewards have been distributed to all those who helped capture the culprits.”
(Source: New York Times, Jan. 5, 1943.)
On this day..
- 1879: Juan Oliva Moncusi, attempted regicide - 2020
- 1745: William Hook - 2019
- 1957: Geza Szivos - 2018
- 1944: Kaj Munk, Danish pastor-poet - 2017
- 1794: Nicolas Luckner, German marshal of France - 2016
- 1568: Eighty-four Valenciennes iconoclasts - 2015
- 1897: The Bicol martyrs of Philippines independence - 2013
- 2011: Ryu Kyong, Kim Jong-un rival - 2012
- 1721: John Stewart, pirate - 2011
- 1943: Jerzy Iwanow (Georgios Ivanof) - 2010
- 1946: The treacherous Theodore Schurch - 2009
- 838: Babak Khorramdin - 2008