UK: Britain's Ministry of Defence says it has launched an investigation into claims of violent bullying in the Royal Marines.
It launched the inquiry yesterday as the News of the World published photographs of what it said were recruits to the Royal Marines being forced to fight each other naked in a bizarre initiation ceremony. The blurred photos, taken from a video sequence, show about a dozen men standing naked in a field.
Two of them are seen fighting each other, first with large rubber mats wrapped around their arms and then with bare fists.
The photos then appear to show a man dressed in blue kicking one of the new recruits in the head. The final photo of the series shows a recruit lying naked on the ground. The paper says he is unconscious.
The paper said the ceremony was secretly filmed in May this year at a barracks near Plymouth by another soldier, who claimed abuse was widespread within the Marines. He said recruits were tortured with electric shocks to their genitals, forced to crawl naked through thorns and ordered to jump out of bedroom windows, which had caused some to break their legs.
The Ministry of Defence said it was satisfied the tape was genuine. "The Royal Marines take these allegations extremely seriously and have a zero tolerance policy on bullying and harassment," a spokesman said.
There have been a number of allegations of abuse within the British armed forces recently, most notably in connection with the deaths of four young soldiers at Deepcut army barracks in Surrey between 1995 and 2002.