RUSSIAN TORTURES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10439, 19 April 1912, Page 2

RUSSIAN TORTURES.

Two non-commissioned officers of gen* darmcric Jiov© (says Renter s agent) been tried at Elisabetgrad, before the Odessa Circuit Court, on the charge of savagelv maltreating a prisoner so that he. died from bis injuries. The victim was a peasant, accused of having stolen the fur coat of a railway traveller. He stoutly denied his guilt, In order to extort a confession, the two gendarmes pounded him with their fists, kicked him. struck him with a poker and burned his body with a red-hot soldering iron. TJunble to stand the torture, the prisoner at length said that he had stolon the coat and hidden it in a certain barn. As it wa.s not found there, the gendarmes recommenced their barbarities, and inflicted such injuries on their victim that lie died the same night. Tho medical evidence showed that the bones of both forearms were broken, and that the body was a mass of burns and contusions. The, gendarmes were sentenced to two and a half and ono years' imprisonment respectively. Similar stories of tho maltreatment of prisoners come from Smolensk. A boy of fourteen recently hanged himself owing to his mind becoming unhinged by the brutality to which he was subjected. He hac! been accused apparently wrongfully—of some petty theft, hie was flogged and beaten by a police officer and a rural guard, and for four days was attached to the shafts of a cart and forced to keep pace with the horse. A doctor testified that he had found eleven weals on the boy's body. The police officer was sentenced to four months' imprisonmen. The rural guard was acquitted.