PRISONERS TORTURED.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3220, 17 May 1911, Page 2

PRISONERS TORTURED.

CRUELTY INFLICTED ON RUSSIANS.

Advices from Efketerinbnrg (Russia) on March 22nd stated that the trial lias been begun, before the Kazan Circuit Court, of a former chief warder and his two assistants and sixteen warders of one of the sections of the Nicholaieff Prison. Over 100 witnesses had 1 been summoned to give evidence, of whom sixty were alleged to have been the victims of - ill-treatment by the acused. .Fifteen of them) ■ were brought to the court in chains.:.;

According to the indictment, special nagaikas were ordered from the prison workshops, consisting of ox-tendons wrapped round with .strips of raw hide. When the ends became frayed, owing to frequent use. they were tied up with iron wire. Among those flogged were political prisoners confined in solitary cells.- The officials are endeavoring to throw the .responsibility upon each other.

The “Bourse Gazette,” quoting the indictment, stated that when, the convicts were examined they were flogged! if they said they had no parents, because there were none but the prison authorities to punish them, andi if they said they had parents they were flogged because their parents' had not brought them- up properly. • 1 A later telegrami from Eketerinburg stated that the sentences in the trial of the nineteen officials for cruelty before the Kazan Circuit Court were as follows:

The former chief warder, one of his assistants, and a senior warder, two years and eight months’ imprisonment in a fortress; four warders, two years’ fortress imprisonment; two warders, six months’ imprisonment; seven warders, one month’s imprisonment.

• The other assistant of the chief warder and two warders'were acquitted.