PORTUGUESE PRISONS.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13892, 24 December 1913, Page 5

PORTUGUESE PRISONS.

BRITISH INVESTIGATOR'S REV-E-

LATIONS

SHOCKING TREATMeNT OF POLITICAL OFFENDERS.

SOLITARY A^GNFINEMEIS TT IN

FOUL CELLS

(Received Bet. 23, 10.40 p.m.) London, Dee. 23

The "Daily Chronicle," summing up ra sories of article* by Mr Philip Gibbs, after a visit to Portugtiese prisons, says the priesthood are hostile to the Republic, but tho Government is not justified ill violating the customs of humanity.

! 3ir Gibhs found that Syndicalists and Republicans, in addition to Royalists were imprisoned without trial, yome r>( thorn in a horrible damp cavern near iLis-bon. Figueredo, a priest, was arrested in March, 1911, and kept in soiitary confinement in a dark, noisome cell, recalling, MediaeraKsm.

Senor Caelho aiwS his wife were kept in solitary confinement for 'reftrsmg' to divulge the names of persons involved in a1 '«?Gnspijaey of which they pfofess ignwafiiee.

Th©' "ClirciMcle rr advises the Portuguese Government to'proclaim: ai poEtr■cal amnesty. ■Thoagß: the scandals are not as horrible as tliose disclosed by Mr Gladstone's pampjjlet on tne Neapolitan prisons m 1850, they are bad enough to justify indignant protests b,y Great' Bidtainv