REVOLTING CRUELTY.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 August 1919, Page 5

REVOLTING CRUELTY.

BY EURASIAN OFFICER. By Telegraph —Press Assn.—•Copyright. Received August 10, 5.5 p.m. London, August 8. Horrible revelations were made at the Fratel court-martial. Nineteen separate charges of cruelty were formulated. Numerous officers and men imprisoned at the Bagtsche camp gave evidence that Fratel lay in his bunk smoking and reading when men were dying of cholera wholesale owing to lack of attention and medicine. They begged Fratel to help, but ho refused, though he waß assistant surgeon at the camp. Some gave evidence that they saw men kicked out of the hospital by orderlies' in Fratel's presence, and that Fratel did not protest, but he even threatened to flog the British with a rawhide thong, wherewith prisoners were beaten on the back or soles of their feet. There were no medical supplies on the trains carrying the prisoners and no food or water for the sick, though others were given a loaf of bread. Of forty six bundled into one train twenty died. The sick in the hospital underwent shocking sufferings. They were never washed, and were thrust into tents to die. When dead they were flung info a so-called deadhouse nearby, filled with rubbish, sometimes a dozen corpses being there. British soldiers were flung in anyhow, som< being naked and some in knickers. —Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn, A previous wire stated:—Revolting cruelty and treachery was revealed at the court-martini of Fratel, an Eurasian warrant, oflicer, who was charged with Sjoss inhumanity and neglect to the lint prisoners at' Bagtsche hospital. It is alleged that Fratel kicked a dying i man, while the dead were flung by Greek J orderlies into the mortuary, mostly naked, and afterwards buried in shallow | graves, whence the jackals dug them up and gnawed their bodies. The prosecution suggested that Fratel, believing the British defeated, sought to ingratiate himself with the Turks.