Video Depicts Somali Torture, TV Station Says

Italian state television broadcast pictures Thursday of what it said were Italian troops torturing Somali prisoners during a U.N. peace mission in 1993.

Rai Uno said the videotape - which appears to show soldiers attaching electrical wires to a prisoner lying on the ground - was shot by an Italian paratrooper on the mission, Michele Patruno.

“The armed forces general command will conduct an internal investigation,” the vice-secretary of defense, Massimo Brutti, told Rai Uno. “If these charges have any real foundation, there won’t be any leniency.”

Patruno said the prisoners were tortured to make them reveal the location of arms caches.

Similar allegations have been leveled against Canadian and Belgian troops who took part in the United Nations’ “Restore Hope” mission during the Somali civil war in 1993.

Trophy pictures of soldiers torturing Somalis were instrumental in bringing the cases to light.

Patruno, now a civilian, told the ANSA news agency that he mentioned the videos to some journalist friends and they encouraged him to make the tape public.

“I didn’t make any secret of the fact I was filming,” he said. “Nobody tried to stop me.”