THE RUSSIAN INQUISITION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8440, 11 May 1907, Page 7

THE RUSSIAN INQUISITION.

M. • Vladimiroff, the Russian journalist, who brought to light the infamous ill-treatment of Marie Spiridonovna, has been investigating the alleged practice of systematic torture in the Warsaw prisons. It took him ttwo months to collect his evidence, so .-great is the secrecy observed in Warsaw by the officials concerned. He 'has now declared on oath, before a .London solicitor, his belief in the vtruth of the narrative related to him 'by the victims, and hopes that, as English public opinion, brought about an official inquiry at Riga, a similar •.result may be obtained regarding Warsaw*. In a letter to the Daily Chronicle, M." Vladimiroff states:— "In Waraaw there is an organised inquisition, with one central torture chamber in the town hall, where the offices of the poiice of security (Okhraina) are situated. From the beginning of last year up to the present time the horrors of the mediaeval Spanish Inquisition have been practised upon a large number of persons." % He gives a score of names, including that of a girl of 18, named Rathkopf. '' To give a notion of the horrors perpetrated in this torture chamber, I will recount the torments and agonies of this girl, as related by herself to a trustworthy witness. Mile. Rathkopf was arrested one evening with her brother, at the house of friends. She was forced to listen to the agonising shrieks of her brother and her betrothed as they were being tortured in an adjoining room. Her brother was afterwards shot in prison without trial. Some days afterwards Grun, the director of the inquisition, entered her cell and urged her to make a full confession of * her crimes, and to give evidence against her brother. A3 the poor girl knew nothing of the matters laid to her charge she could not furnish the evidence required of her. She was then led to the torture chamber, a | large room with two windows. A 1 table stood in the centre. Ivanov, the young officer of gendarmes, was present, and a dozen police officers, With sticks and rods of rubber in their hands. The young girl was f-* seized and flung face downwards on the table. Two men held her legs and tjvo her arms. Ivanov gave the signal, and then the torture began. She was beaten on the back, the head, and the legs. She soon lost corisciousness. As soon as she returned to her senses Grun questioned her again, and, failing to obtain the replies he desired, he ordered the tortures to bo renewed, and they were carried on at intervals until daylight. These cruelties were repeated on two other nights, and fresh torments were devised to wring a confession from her. Her teeth were broken, her hair was pulled out, and she was laid on her back and beaten and kicked on the abdomen till the blood spurted from her mouth. For two months Mile. Rathkopf lay in prison between life and death, and it was six months

before she could stand or walk. ( The, police, fearing dangerous revela- ) lions, allowed naone to aee her. She was transferred to a prison at a distance, where a lady, who was a political prisoner, met her, and it was l,h is lady who repeated her story to me. She added that she was horrified by the appearance of this girl, whose fearful experiences had made her look like an elderly brokendown woman." Grun himself, writes M. Vladimiroft*, can no longer perpetrate these outrages. Early last month, when he was in the street—and amid a group of policemen —he was attacked by a dozen revolutionaries, who shot him in no fewer than 20 places. In Russia, he adds, these prison horrors have been successfully concealed, but in England it is possible to mate them public. .tj