The 15 captured Brits

The more information coming out it becomes much more bizarre. Its boiling down to "he said, she said" and we'll probably never know the truth. But that won't stop me from Frisking this thing.

The only woman among the 15 British naval personnel held by Iran told Monday how she was forced to strip and her captors had threatened that she might never see her baby daughter again.

I'm not privy to this sort of thing, but aren't even prison inmates made to strip and change into prison clothing? See later because she wasn't totally nude.

But in a new round of the propaganda war between the two sides, fought over the captives, Iran broadcast new footage of the Britons playing table-tennis and watching an English football game which it insisted showed they were well treated.

Well, that sure sounds like torture.

"At one stage ... (the interrogator) asked me, 'How do you feel about dying for your country?" she said.

That is, at best a veiled threat to her life. It also might easily be a question an Iranian is curious to know the answer to although her being in the military should make the question rather moot.

"The next day, another interrogator said to me, 'You don't understand, you must cooperate with us. Do you not want to see your daughter again?"

This is the most serious accusation. They were captured military. Yes, it was possible she would never see her family again.

For the first five days, Turney was also made to believe that the other 14 men had gone home, and she was the only one left.

That's pretty lame psychological warfare if you ask me.

"I was thrown into a tiny little cell and ordered to strip off," Turney told the newspaper.

"They took everything from me apart from my knickers. Then some cotton pyjamas were thrown in for me to wear and four filthy blankets. The metal door slammed shut again."

I have to withhold judgment on this because she makes no mention of what sex the guards were and it might have been females. We just don't know. At any rate this isn't terribly humiliating to my way of looking at it, but then I've seen women's breasts. Big deal.

The youngest of the captives, Arthur Batchelor, 20, said he was also stripped to his underpants, left in solitary confinement for several days ordeal, and an interrogator indicated that if he did not co-operate, he would not see his family.

Following their capture on March 23, Batchelor said: "I was frozen in terror and just stared into the darkness of my blindfold. I could feel the emotion welling up inside me."

Again, we have Abu Ghraib and Gitmo as benchmarks. This is pretty tame stuff although I'm sure he was extremely frightened.

He added that he been berated for his youth and diminutive appearance -- his captors called him "Mr Bean," after the bumbling television character -- and one of his interrogators "indicated I might never see my family again if I didn't go along with what they told me to do."

OMG! They called him Mr Bean. The fucking bastards.

To be honest, with the uncertainty and the picture of Iran painted in the West, I have no idea whether I'd be any braver or less terrorized than these 15. I like to hope I'd have handled it well, but just as happy I'll never know.

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