§ SIR WILLIAM M'ARTHURasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether it is a fact that during the last twelve months numerous arrests of Old Servians charged with political offences have been made at Prishtina, Uscub, and other places; whether, notwithstanding the promise of the Porte to release them, they are still detained in loathsome dungeons without trial, and forbidden to communicate with their friends; and, whether it is true that other arrests of Old Servians have lately been made?
§ LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICESir, numerous arrests of Old Servians charged with conspiring against the Turkish Government were made last year in the Vilayet of Kossova. Lord Dufferin, on learning that they were being ill-treated in prison, made representations on their behalf to the Porte in October last, and received a promise that instructions would be sent to the local authorities to desist from ill-treating the prisoners, as was reported, and to 1427 give them a fair trial; but it has lately transpired that these men, who had been condemned on the evidence of a renegade spy, wore to be deported to Acre, and imprisoned in the casemates of the fortress—a sentence which was described as one of slow death. Her Majesty's Chargé d'Affairs, acting on instructions from home, addressed a letter to the Porte last month, and made a strong verbal appeal to the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs to cause some mitigation to be made in the punishment it was proposed to inflict on them. Reports have reached Her Majesty's Government of arrests being made in parts of Albania; but no official information has yet been received on the subject. I may observe that the district of Old Servia is one of those entitled to the execution of the Organic Statute mentioned in Article XXIII. of the Treaty of Berlin, which has not been put into force by the Porte.