IN SPANISH PRISONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 May 1940, Page 6

IN SPANISH PRISONS

EIGHTEEN MONTHS’ ORDEAL.

WELSH MINER TWICE SENTENCED TO DEATH. Two men of the International Brigade returned to London recently after spending the past 18 months in General Franco’s prisons in Spain, one of them under sentence of death. They are Tom Jones, a miner from Rhos, near Wrexham, in North Wales, and Jim Cameron, a fisherman, ‘ who emigrated from Scotland to Canada some years ago. They have brought back with them a' terrible story of what happens in prisons crowded with victims of the Spanish war. They told of: Thousands of political prisoners—men, women and children —crowded into prisons built to hold only a few hundreds.

Executions by shooting and garrotting. Men beaten up by the guards and sometimes beaten to death, for trifling offences against prison discipline. Thousands of prisoners having no sleeping accommodation but the floor of the prison rooms and corridors. Prisoners counting up the number of loaves issued for the mid-day meal and calculating from the number left over after the issue, how many men had been executed that morning.

Interrogations by agents of the German Gestapo. Ringleaders of a prison rebellion garrotted in the prison square before all the other prisoners as an example. Tom Jones fell into the hands of Franco’s troops, he said at the battle of the Ebro, in September, 1938. His company surrendered. A machine-gun detachment arrived to take the men prisoner—but instead suddenly mowed them down with machine-gun fire. Jones was the only survivor. He fell into the trench, shot through the hand. Some hours later a Franco patrol found Jones and took him first to the local military headquarters, then to Sargossa, and four or five days later in a cattle truck to the prisoners of war hospital at Bilbao. There for the first time, his wound was dressed. In September, 1938. he was removed to the Saragossa Prison, his only clothes being shirt, trousers and rope sandals. In this prison, built to accommodate 250 prisoners, there were 4000 men and 500 women and children, including 52 babies. "In January, 1939. I was twice brought before a military court and twice sentenced to death. No interpreter was allowed, and I had to defend myself in Spanish,” Jones said. Because of pressure from England. Jones’ death sentence was'commuted in March. 1939. to one of 30 years’ imprisonment. He was then removed to the Burgos penitentiary, where conditions were somewhat better. Last month, again because of pressure of England, Jones’ sentence was commuted to one of deportation. He returned home this week to find that his lather and mother died while he was in Spain.