TREATMENT OF PRISONERS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 114, 31 May 1937, Page 7

TREATMENT OF PRISONERS

"Practically Starved" (Received. 31, 11.0 a.m.) HENDAYE, May 30. Several released British prisoners have arrived in France. A Oanadaan, Mr Bert Levy, questioned ahout the insurgent statement that the prisoners were well treated, said: "I would like to push that lie down the throat of whoever said it. We praqtically starved. We were covered with vermin and there was no water to clean ourselves. We were forced to sleep on the ground. Ten of our comrad.es died of lung trouble." Mr John Montgomery, of Glasgow, confirmed Mr Levy's statement. The Times' Bordeaux correspondent says: Foreign ex-militiamen reieased by General Franco, totalling 4.5, including 23 Englishmen, have entered France. One Englishman was captured at Talavera, where 540 of his battalion of 600 were .killed. A Frenchman captured in Madrid fighting said: "I lay for months in a filthy prison and was constantly maltreated. An oflicer entered every night and took out men to be shot and buried by a fatigue party. "We were mustered in the prison yard a week ago while General Franco' s brother draggingly extolied Fascism and announced our early liberation. We did not believe him, because men were taken and shot the same night as usual, but two days later we were crammed into cars and taken to Salamanca prison where, with other captives, we were flbsried and forced to say before the microplione that we had become Fascists, and cheer for the rebel cauge, "Apparently we were liberated on jnstructions of the Italian Fascist Propaganda Committee." Other accounts corrobate this Frenchman' s story.