TORTURE IN RUSSIA.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 428, 14 December 1868, Page 3

TORTURE IN RUSSIA.

M. Emile Andreoli, who took part in the last Polish insurrection, and on being captured by the Russians, was sentencedto'twelveyears'jimprisonuient in Siberia, has just published in the Revue Moderne the first part of his prison recollections, some of which are certainly curious. " I was told," he remarks, " that on two or three occasions an electric battery has been made use of by the Russian police to loosen the tongues of the prisoners who refused to answer the questions put to them, which shows that the Russian Government is one of progress, and knows how to turn the discoveries of science to account. After all, this was not more cruel than the torture of the herring. I knew several who underwent the latter, and they told me that nothing could compare with the sufferings which they endured. They were confined in a well-warmed apartment, salted herrings with bread and water for the first few days being their only food. If they refused to answer the questions of the examining commissioners, the bread was the first of all withdrawn, and then the water, whereupon the torture of intense thirst commenced, depriving the sufferer of all moral strength, and even making him abandon the resolution which he had formed to die. Very rarely did any one remain mute when brought before the commissioners a second time. The sittings were usually at night, in a splendidly lighted apartment, with refreshments of all kinds temptingly displayed on the side tables. The president would usually be most gracious. ' By-and-by,' he would say, 'we will, if you like, ask you to have something to drink with us.' The fever and the vei-tigo caused the prisoners to lose their reason, and they generally yielded. Hunger would not have brought about the same result as thirst, which loosens the tongue even far more readily than drunkenness does."