Britain ran secret torture centre during WW IILondon: Britain ran a secret torture centre during World War II to extract information from German prisoners, a media report here has claimed. The daily said it learnt about its existence from papers unearthed from the National Archives and the Red Cross, from whom the centre was kept secret. The centre, located in Kensington Palace Gardens, now home to ambassadors, billionaires and princes, including the Sultan of Brunei and steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, interrogated 3,573 prisoners, said the Guardian report. Comprising three mansions in the area, the office of the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, colloquially known as the ‘London Cage’, was run by MI19, the section of the War Office responsible for getting information from prisoners. The centre, which began functioning from July 1940, continued to run even after the war ended, till 1948. The ‘Cage’ was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Scotland, who had briefly served in the German Army in Namibia. “Many were systematically beaten, deprived of sleep, forced to stand still for more than 24 hours at a time and threatened with execution or unnecessary surgery,” the report said. The report said that “A subsequent assessment concluded that the commanding officer had been guilty of ‘clear breaches’ of the Geneva convention’. * “many were systematically beaten, deprived of sleep, forced to stand still for more than 24 hours at a time and threatened with execution or unnecessary surgery” Last modified November 15, 2005 |