BRITISH PRISONERS IN, TURKEY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3192, 17 September 1917, Page 6

BRITISH PRISONERS IN, TURKEY

GRIM STORIES OF-TURKISH . ATROCITIES. Evidence is steadily accumulating of tiie bad treatment of the. British prisoners of war in Turkey (says an exchange). It is learned from the most trustworthy sources that a large number of British and Indian .prisoners in Mesopotamia have succumbed to ill-treatment or lack of proper medical attention. A man who was for somo time near a prisonere-of-war camp in the Taurus states that more than half of tho unfortunate men captured at Kut aro now dead. ; It is noteworthy that the Swiss Red Cross Commission, whose report was sufficiently damning with regard to tho camps which they were allowed to inspect, were not allowed to approach this camp or other camps of the same type. Thirty-seven British prisoners were sent to a hospital under European management. The European doctor in charge was of tho opinion that with, proper caro he could t save So of them, but ho and his assistants were driven away from their own hospital, and during the lirst fifteen days 23 of the men died fiom sheer neglect. Fifty prisoners captured at, Katia in April, 1916, woro sent to a hospital at Algjpo. They could hardly stand from weakness. One asked for a cigarette. One was given him by a ■bystander, but the non-commissioned officer in charge of the party snatched it away and stamped on it. All of these prisoners were suffering from dysentery one to starvation. A German subaltern who spent the winter at Manmiroa saw tho bodies of •100 Indian prisoners who had died of starvation. Another witness ?aw 150 British prisoners at Knrnin. in Northern Syria, in the most doplorablo condition. Their only ration consisted, ho stated, of soup.