Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 7:47 pm Download Post Post subject: NEWS!! Britain ran WWII Torture Camp It's no surprise to anyone familiar with Allied treatment of prisoners, but here we have it in the mainstream press. Perhaps Auschwitz Commandant Hoess (who was indeed tortured) and other German 'confessors' had some knowledge of this fun loving place. - Hannover Britain ran WWII torture camp: Report 11/13/2005 Source ::: AFP http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section= World_News&subsection=United+Kingdom+%26+Europe&month=November2005&file=World_News 2005111332715.xml LONDON: Britain ran a secret torture camp during World War II to extract confessions and information from enemy prisoners, a British newspaper said yesterday. The Guardian daily said it had unearthed official papers which showed that 3,573 men passed through the centre between July 1940 and September 1948. Several detainees were systematically beaten, forced to stand still for more than 24 hours, deprived of sleep and threatened with unnecessary surgery or execution, the newspaper said. Some are alleged to have been starved, subjected to extremes of temperature, while others claimed they had been threatened with electric shocks and menaced by interrogators with red-hot pokers. The London Cage was installed in a row of mansions in the capital's plush Kensington Palace Gardens, one of the world's most exclusive streets. One of the mansions is now the London home of the Sultan of Brunei. The Guardian garnered the information from Britain's National Archives and the Red Cross in Geneva, from which incidents at the Cage were carefully concealed. The London office of the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre had space for 60 prisoners at a time and five interrogation rooms. Over 1,000 were persuaded to give statements about war crimes. The camp was run by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Scotland. Decorated for his interrogation of German soldiers in World War I, he was called out of retirement in 1939 at the age of 57. A report by MI5, Britain's interior security service, concluded that Scotland had been guilty of "clear breaches" of the Geneva Convention and that some interrogation methods "completely contradicted" international law. Scotland submitted his memoirs for censorship in 1950. An MI5 assessment found it detailed breaches of the Geneva Convention, noting that prisoners had been forced to kneel while they were beaten, stand to attention for 26 hours and threatened with "an unnecessary operation" and execution. A heavily edited version was published in 1957. A letter of complaint from German SS captain Fritz Knoechlein described his treatment after entering the London Cage in October 1946. "Unable to make the desired confession", Knoechlein said he was stripped and deprived of sleep for four days. He claimed he was kicked, doused in cold water, pushed down stairs, beaten with a cudgel, forced to stand by a gas stove with its rings lit. The Guardian said he made the allegations while facing the death penalty and could have been making a bid to escape the noose. The Ministry of Defence is still witholding some of the papers on the London Cage. _________________