LITHUANIA: Third Degree

Trembling witnesses went pale and stuttered with fright as they testified at Kovno last week against the dread onetime Chief of Lithuania's Political Police, Herr Jacob Badchis, now on trial for acts of gross brutality, extortion and malfeasance in office.

Boldest of the witnesses was a small, bent, greying woman. Like a Fury she raged at Herr Badchis, "You ordered my daughter's arrest and thought you could make her talk. When she kept quiet your men strapped her into a chair, an electric chair!

"You will say, Herr Badchis, that you turned on only enough electricity to make her talk. But instead she laughed. . . . She always laughs now. . . . You drove her mad!"

As the trial proceeded, the Prosecution was seriously embarrassed, last week, when two of its chief witnesses were mysteriously shot dead near their homes. Commented Bad-Man Badchis, innocently, "All this is the result of a plot by my enemies."