Britain's Secret Prisons

Secret imprisonment in a posh German spa, Gestapo interrogation techniques (thumb screws, shin screws), starvation: It was all part of Britain's way of doing occupation in post-Nazi Germany, the Guardian reports today: "All of these men had been held at Bad Nenndorf, a small, once-elegant spa resort near Hanover. Here, an organisation called the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) ran a secret prison following the British occupation of north-west Germany in 1945. CSDIC, a division of the War Office, operated interrogation centres around the world, including one known as the London Cage, located in one of London's most exclusive neighbourhoods. Official documents discovered last month at the National Archives at Kew, south-west London, show that the London Cage was a secret torture centre where German prisoners who had been concealed from the Red Cross were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with execution or with unnecessary surgery."

Is that where the United States learned its first rendition tactics?