The Men of the Forest

In the staid Swiss capital of Bern last week, plainclothesmen roamed the hotels, and scores of policemen accompanied by equally alert police dogs stood guard over the picturesque old town hall. Inside the town hall, which had been temporarily transformed into a courtroom, still more police kept a sharp eye on a polyglot crowd composed of some 120 newsmen, dozens of Iron Curtain refugees, and "observers" from Communist Rumania, China and Yugoslavia.

At the heart of all this furor were four fanatic young men, the band of anti-Communist Rumanians who in February 1955 electrified the world by seizing Red Rumania's Bern legation and holding it for 42 hours before they surrendered to a small army of Swiss police backed up by tanks (TIME, Feb. 28, 1955). Now, 16 months later, the four were on trial before Switzerland's Federal Tribunal, charged with offenses ranging from espionage to the killing of Rumanian Legation Chauffeur Aurel Setu.

"A Bit Fantastic?" Leader of the band was 32-year-old Oliviu Beldeanu, a bearded six-footer who had passed his time in prison carving religious images. Testifying for almost two solid days, Beldeanu explained that he and his comrades had joined Rumania's underground, "The Men of the Forest," following the execution or imprisonment of their parents by the Communists. Fleeing west in 1949, they had been embittered by Western indifference to Rumania's plight. "I wanted to show the world that legations of Eastern countries are spy centers," said Beldeanu.

The killing of Chauffeur Setu, insisted Beldeanu, was an accident. Convinced that Setu was trying to get a gun out of the legation car, one of the younger members of the band aimed at Setu's feet only to have his Sten gun jump and riddle the chauffeur's body. Beldeanu admitted, however, that he had considered taking hostages and holding the legation until the Bucharest government liberated a number of prominent anti-Communists from Rumanian jails. "Don't you think this is a bit too fantastic?" asked Presiding Judge Paul Schwartz. "No," said Beldeanu firmly.

"I Know Criminals." Anxious not to compromise Swiss neutrality, Judge Schwartz resolutely steered Beldeanu away from any discussion of the contents of the 464 documents that the band had turned over to the Swiss police, and which the police--after a day's delay--had dutifully returned to the legation. Otherwise, the court heard defense witnesses out with obvious fascination, and when the prosecution began to present its witnesses, their statements frequently sounded more like letters of reference than like hostile testimony. "I know criminals when I see them," declared the prison warden. "These men are no criminals."

Summing up for the prosecution at week's end, Attorney General Rene Dubois himself sounded almost like a defense counsel, made it abundantly clear where Swiss sympathies lay. "The defendants' lives," said Dubois, "have not been happy . . . They learned political hatred, went from jail to jail." Then, although under Swiss law he could have demanded 20-year sentences on the murder charge alone, Dubois asked only six years' imprisonment for Beldeanu and shorter sentences for the other three Men of the Forest.

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