GESTAPO METHODS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26616, 12 November 1947, Page 5

GESTAPO METHODS

GREEK POLICE TROOPS EXECUTION OF COMMUNISTS VICTIMS’ HEADS CARRIED THROUGH STREETS N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, Nov. 11. Under the heading, “What are we British doing? ” the Daily Mirror publishes on • its front page two photographs of mounted Greek troops dressed in British battledress riding through Greek villages carrying the severed heads of executed Communist guerrillas. With the photographs it also publishes a letter from a British corporal who says that on the morning the photographs were taken nine heads, including one of a woman, were paradecjL The writer describes an incident at Tirnavos, near Larissa, where British troops saw Greek troops herd 30 women in a barracks and brutally beat them while motor cycle engines were started up to drown the sound of their screams. One woman, a cripple, was savagely beaten across the face and stomach with her own sticks. The corporal states that when British officers protested about the beatings they stopped in this particular village, but were carried out elsewhere. The corporal accuses the Greek police of terrorist methods equal to those of the Gestapo at its worst. Publication of this- letter in the Mirror follows the publication by the Communist Daily Worker of a photograph of Greek troops in British battledress and steel helmets shooting down a line of handcuffed men and women Communists. , Editorially, the Mirror says: ‘ The British soldier is neither a paid mercenary nor a hired thug. He objects to being forced to witness brutalities which outrage his conscience as a citizen and his tradition as a soldier. Something should be done about Greece. The first thing is to get the British Army out of that filthy hell’s broth.”