The Kangaroo Court

Under Nazi rule, the Germans used the great hall of Pankrac Prison in Prague as a combination courtroom and execution chamber. Last week into Pankrac's great hall the Czech Communist government brought its own victim: Associated Press Correspondent William N. Oatis, who was arrested by Czech police nearly three months ago (TIME, May 7). He was charged with "espionage" and "activities hostile to the state." But his real crime was reporting the news.

As he stood up before the five-judge court, Bill Oatis (6 ft., 120 Ibs.) looked even frailer than usual. His glasses were gone, even though he can barely see without them. After railing against all Western newsmen as "trained spies," the prosecutor summed up: "Oatis was particularly dangerous because of his discretion and insistence on only accurate, correct and verified information."

The Snatch. As an A.P. staffer for 14 years, Oatis had earned the good reputation the prosecutor damned him for. A stickler for accuracy and a digger for details, cautious, quiet Reporter Oatis had seemed just the man to put in charge of the bureau in Prague a year ago, after two chiefs had been booted out by the Czech government on trumped-up charges.

In Prague, Reporter Oatis did not put government handouts on the wire without trying to check them first or add background material. He had his first big runin with the Czech police when he tried to find out the home address of a speaker at the Prague Youth Conference who was listed by the Czech government as a U.S. delegate, although he had viciously attacked America. Later, four of Oatis' Czech assistants mysteriously disappeared. On April 22, Oatis himself reported to the U.S. embassy that he was being watched 24 hours a day. Next day he was kidnaped by the police and jailed. All requests to see him were brusquely turned down.

The Confession. When he appeared at the trial last week, there were no Western newsmen in Prague, and only two U.S. embassy officials were admitted to the courtroom. Oatis met his defense lawyer for the first time when the trial magistrate pointed to a stranger standing near by and told Oatis, "This is Dr. Bartos." Then, like a ventriloquist's dummy, Oatis went through all the stiff motions of "confessing" to espionage. As in other propaganda trials, the low, hesitant words were broadcast. Oatis admitted taking orders from New York and London A.P. officials to find out what happened to deposed Czech Foreign Minister Vladimir dementis and otherwise trying to get information that the Czech government had not officially released. To Western newsmen, his "spying" was obviously no more than the routine news-gathering of correspondents all over the free world. The only charge against him that was not strictly news-gathering Oatis flatly denied. He knew nothing, he said, about "a man named Joe," who was accused of being a leader in a group connected with the assassination of a Czech security policeman long before Oatis came to Prague.

Witnesses testified to such acts by Oatis as checking on the comings & goings of high politicos at Prague airport, and visiting foreign diplomats. Three of Oatis' Czech assistants (the fourth is still missing) admitted that they too "felt guilty."

Then Bill Oatis, broken by months of questioning, made his final speech. "I am sorry I went in for espionage in this country," he said. "I did it only because I listened to the wrong kind of orders from abroad ... I am sorry for all this. Your security organ caught me and now you know all about me." The Czech court sentenced him to ten years in prison, with a chance of five years off for "good behavior." His three assistants got 16, 18 and 20-year sentences.

The Ransom Price? The verdict touched off a roar of protest all over the free world. The State Department blasted the trial as "a kangaroo court staged before the klieg lights of propaganda," a "shabby 'conviction'" based on "fabricated charges." In London, the News Chronicle cried: "To make the legitimate gathering of news a crime as the Czechs have done is as severe an indictment of the Communist regimes as there could be."

Robert A. Vogeler, recuperating from the same kind of Darkness-at-Noon proceeding, put his finger on the probable Czech motive for the Oatis conviction. "They snatch an American citizen," said Vogeler, "and hold him prisoner until our State Department coughs up ransom . . . We are the greatest country and we continue to crawl." To get Vogeler out of jail, the U.S. went along with the Communists' snatch & ransom plot, forked over several million dollars worth of industrial concessions to the Hungarian government. What ransom do the Czechs want? Among the guesses is that they want the U.S. to shut up Radio Free Europe, a private organization (TIME, July 17, 1950) which broadcasts the names of Czech spies and government informants and needles the Czech regime unmercifully.

There is every reason to believe that the State Department will not pay ransom. But other than stopping all private travel to Czechoslovakia right after Oatis was arrested, it has not yet gone beyond protests and denunciations to help Oatis. The Czech government still has nine embassy officials in Washington, five staffers at the U.N., and it is still selling goods in the U.S. at the rate of $28,000,000 a year.

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