He was arrested in St. Petersburg on April 2, 1879, and was thrown into one of the casemates of the fortress of Petropávlovsk. He lay there, in the strictest solitary confinement, until May, 1880 — almost a year — and was then tried by court-martial upon the charge of political conspiracy. He pleaded not guilty, and declared that he had never had any relations with the revolutionary party; but he was convicted, nevertheless, upon fragmentary and misinterpreted circumstantial evidence, and condemned to fifteen years of penal servitude with deprivation of all civil rights and banishment to Siberia for life.[1] At the time of his trial the London Times, in a column editorial upon his case, said:
Our correspondent at St. Petersburg, in a dispatch we publish this morning, telegraphs the sentences passed yesterday on the prisoners charged with participation in the Nihilist conspiracy. Western observers can see in these state trials at St. Petersburg nothing but a shameful travesty of justice. The whole of these proceedings are an example of the way in which any one can govern by the aid of a state of siege. Military justice has had, as a rule, the merit of being sharp and sudden, but the military justice of the Russian courts has been as cruel in its dilatoriness as grossly illogical in its methods and terribly severe in its sentences. ... Among the accused who were condemned yesterday, Dr. Véimar was in every way a man of whom his country seemed to have reason to be proud. He is in personal bearing a gallant gentleman. As a physician he has devoted his time and skill to the service of his suffering countrymen. He is (or was till yesterday, for to-day he is a drudge in the deadly mines) decorated with Russian and Roumanian orders, and with the medal for the Turkish war. He was with the troops who crossed the Balkans under Gurkó — a splendid feat of arms. The charges against this gentleman, the way in which the case was got up and pressed, would seem exaggerated in the wildest burlesque. The humors of injustice were never earned so far, if
- ↑ The official report of the trial of Dr. Véimar, and a number of other political offenders arraigned with him, will be found in the St. Petersburg newspaper Gólos for May, 1880, numbers 133-138. It was the opinion of all the officers of the exile administration who knew Dr. Véimar in Siberia that he was an innocent man unjustly condemned. Major Pótulof and Colonel Nóvikof expressed this belief to me very strongly.
