HONG KONG: Saboteur

One of the most successful jobs of sabotage in the cold war took place five months ago, when an Air-India Constellation, loaded with eight Chinese Communist delegates bound for the Asia-African Conference at Bandung, exploded over the South China Sea. Peking blamed the crash on U.S. and Chinese Nationalist agents, and said the plane had been tampered with while being refueled at British Hong Kong. Although they guarded the plane to keep intruders away, British authorities acknowledged that they had neglected to check the employees (largely Chinese) who serviced the plane.

Last week, after four months of sleuthing, bolstered by a proffered $100,000 (Hong Kong) reward, Hong Kong police issued a warrant for the arrest of one Chow Tse-ming, a $25-a-month airfield employee who had helped clean out the plane during its stopover, and, presumably, planted a bomb in the starboard wheel-well. Because the actual deaths occurred far beyond the Hong Kong police jurisdiction, Chow could only be charged with “conspiracy to murder” (maximum penalty: ten years). They would also have to find him. One month after the air crash, Chow fled to Formosa.