Camp 020
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Camp 020 at Latchmere House in south London was a British interrogation centre for captured German agents during the Second World War.[1] It was run by Lieutenant Colonel Robin "Tin Eye" Stephens.[1][2] Although other wartime interrogation centres were alleged to have used torture to extract confessions, Robin Stephens denied claims that torture had been used at Camp 020.[2] His instructions for interrogators at Camp 020 ordered: “Never strike a man. In the first place it is an act of cowardice. In the second place, it is not intelligent. A prisoner will lie to avoid further punishment and everything he says thereafter will be based on a false premise.”[3] It is known that Stephens punished those who disobeyed this order, and in one case ejected a senior War Office interrogator from the camp.[4]
In 2012 Ian Cobain in the book Cruel Britannia claimed that documents obtained at the National Archives proved that torture methods had been used at Camp 020 to extract information, and that 30 rooms there had been turned into cells with hidden microphones, further that there were mock executions and several inmates were treated brutally by the guards. Members of the British Union of Fascists had been held at Latchmere House during this period.[5][6] They included the environmental pioneer Jorian Jenks.[citation needed]
There was a Reserve Camp, Camp 020R, at Huntercombe, which was used mainly for long term detention of prisoners.[7]
Inmates
Known wartime inmates included:
- James Larratt Battersby
- Hugo Bleicher[7]
- Gösta Caroli[7]
- Eddie Chapman[7]
- Josef Jakobs[7]
- Werner von Janowski[7]
- Christiaan Lindemans[7]
- Karel Richard Richter[7]
- Wulf Schmidt[7]
- Duncan Scott-Ford[7]
- Gastão de Freitas Ferraz[7]
See also
References
- ^ a b "Who We Are: History: Cold War: Bad Nenndorf". MI5. 2009. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
- ^ a b Macintyre, Ben (10 February 2006). "The truth that Tin Eye saw". The Times. Retrieved 22 February 2010.
- ^ King, Gilbert (November 23, 2011). "The Monocled World War II Interrogator". Smithsonian Magazine.
- ^ "Bad Nenndorf". MI5.
- ^ Cobain, Ian (26 October 2012). "How Britain tortured Nazi PoWs: The horrifying interrogation methods that belie our proud boast that we fought a clean war". Daily Mail. London. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
Extracted from Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain
- ^ Cobain, Ian (2012). Cruel Britannia. Portobello Books.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Hoare, Oliver, Camp 020: MI5 and the Nazi Spies – The Official History of MI5's Wartime Interrogation Centre, PRO 2000 ISBN 1-903365-08-2.