Living skeletons

The above are photographs of pure evil. Not the men portrayed - but what was done to them. They had been starved to within an inch of their lives (and perhaps beyond) in prison by their captors. You might assume that they were survivors of Buchenwald, or one of the other Nazi camps - but you'd be wrong. These men were turned into living skeletons by the British government.

The men pictured were prisoners of the UK's Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) detention facility at Bad Nenndorf near Hamburg. In the wake of the Nazi surrender and the early days of the cold war Bad Nenndorf played host to former Nazis, members of the SS, prominent German industrialists, and later suspected communists, as well as various people who were there apparently for no reason at all. Prisoners were systematically starved, beaten, frozen, whipped, and tortured with captured Gestapo shin- and thumb-screws. At least two prisoners were starved to death, at least one was beaten to death, and others suffered serious illness and injuries.

When the torture was revealed (in the usual way: brave and moral people who could not believe or stomach what they were seeing complained), it was hushed up by the British government. It would not do to have the public know that they had been treating prisoners, in the words of one Cabinet Minister, "in a manner reminiscent of the German concentration camps". Three officers were eventually charged with a variety of crimes, and their half-hearted courts-martial held in secret. Only one, the camp doctor, was convicted - and his "sentence" was dismissal from the army. As with Abu Ghraib, no-one was really held accountable - and the veil of official secrecy was intended to ensure that no-one would be. It has only been lifted now because of the UK's Freedom of Information Act - but I suspect it is too late; after sixty years, almost everyone involved will have died of old age, and the memories of any surviving witnesses and prisoners may have faded too much. OTOH we are still prosecuting Nazi camp guards for what they did sixty years ago, and if any surviving interrogators from Bad Nenndorf can be found, they should if possible face the same fate (or at least spend their twilight years fearing it). There should be no pity for torturers; they are hostis humani generis, whatever their nationality.

As for the British government, the least they could do is acknowledge and apologise for the horrors of the past - but the British Ministry of Defence is apparently refusing to do even that. They are also holding back further documents about other post-WWII torture centres on the basis that they have been "contaminated with asbestos". Which really just makes you wonder what else they are trying to hide...