Revealed: victims of UK's cold war torture camp

The pictures show men who had suffered months of starvation, sleep deprivation, beatings and extreme cold at one of a number of interrogation centres run by the War Office in postwar Germany.

A few were starved or beaten to death, while British soldiers are alleged to have tortured some victims with thumb screws and shin screws recovered from a gestapo prison. The men in the photographs are not Nazis, however, but suspected communists, arrested in 1946 because they were thought to support the Soviet Union, an ally 18 months earlier.

Apparently believing that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable, the War Office was seeking information about Russian military and intelligence methods. Dozens of women were also detained and tortured, as were a number of genuine Soviet agents, scores of suspected Nazis, and former members of the SS.

Yesterday there were calls for the Ministry of Defence to acknowledge what had happened and apologise. Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrats' defence spokesman, said: "It's too late for anyone to be held personally responsible, or held politically to account, but it's not too late for the MoD to acknowledge what has happened."

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