Mystery of Spandau's prisoner No 7

It was as consultant surgeon to the British military in Berlin from 1972 until 1974 that Thomas examined Spandau Prison's Allied Prisoner No 7 - known to the world as Rudolf Hess. Thomas could find no evidence of scarring from gunshot wounds that the real Hess is known to have incurred during the First World War. He also discovered inconsistencies in the ''official'' version of Hess's flight to Scotland in May 1941.

This set him on a quest which has convinced him that not only was Prisoner No 7 not the real Hess, but that he was subsequently murdered as part of a cover-up by British Intelligence.

The Karl Hille film, set to be

distributed world-wide in the form of a three-hour video, Rudolf Hess,

The Appalling Truth, takes testimony from not only Thomas, but former intelligence agents, historians,

and politicians.

In the words of one of the film's

narrators, Hess expert Andrew Rosthorne, it is a tale of wartime lies and political murder.

The official version of the Hess affair is that, on his own initiative and unknown to Hitler, he took off from Augsburg, bound for Scotland on a peace mission on May 10, 1941, piloting a Messerschmitt 110D. Low on fuel and finding it difficult to land, he bailed out near Floors Farm, Eaglesham, about 12 miles short of his destination - the estate of the Duke of Hamilton at Dungavel.

Hess, according to the official

version of events, was under the delusion that Hamilton and other members of the British establishment were willing to discuss peace terms with Germany, and that the common enemy was Bolshevism.

His peace proposals were dismissed, and after periods of incarceration and interrogation at various locations throughout Britain he was later sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg for war crimes.

On August 17, 1987, using a length of flex discarded by workmen, the 93-year-old Hess committed suicide by hanging himself in a gardener's hut in the grounds of Spandau Prison. The Hille film, which The Herald was granted exclusive permission to view, seeks to destroy this official version of events.

A Danish expert in reconstructive surgery, Barend Haeseker, points out that when Hess was shot in the First World War this was in the pre-antibiotics period, and that the resultant infection would have left scarring. A post mortem carried out on Prisoner No 7 could find no evidence of scarring on his chest and damage to a lung the real Hess is know to have received.

The only scarring was from knife wounds Prisoner No 7 is known to have inflicted upon himself.

Testimony from German flying ace Adolf Galland, interviewed before he died, claims that he had received personal orders from Goering on May 11, 1941, to shoot Hess down after he had taken off from Augsburg. Galland claims three groups (12 aircraft) were sent up to intercept Hess and shoot him down, but they did not have enough fuel and had to abort

the mission.

There are inconsistencies in Galland's claims, however, and the film points out that after the war he was ''accompanied'' for a time by a British intelligence agent .

Examining the pro-peace movement in Britain, the film re-examines the evidence that both the Duke of Buccleuch and then Bank of England director Montague Norman were involved in covert peace talks, and that peace feelers were being put out through Sweden. Neither Churchill nor Hitler may have been aware of these peace attempts, and there is a tantalising possibility separate plots may have been in operation by separate groups in Britain and Germany to overthrow both Churchill and Hitler.

By the time it came to the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, the British Government and intelligence services were well aware the man being sentenced was not the real Hess, but a ''doppelganger''.

It was essential, Dr Thomas claims, for this not to become known, and for the doppelganger to be executed. As a result, pressure was put on Lord Birkett, the British judge, to find ''Hess'' guilty on the charge of crimes against humanity - which carried an automatic death sentence. Lord Birkett, however, absented himself from the sentencing procedure. By the margin of only one vote, ''Hess'' was saved from execution and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Successive British governments, the film claims, were able to maintain the fiction surrounding the identity of Hess - but trouble came in March 1987 when Soviet president Gorbachev, in the new era of glasnost, indicated agreement to Prisoner No 7's release on humanitarian grounds.

Shortly before a four-powers'

(United States, Soviet Union, France, and Britain) meeting in Spandau to discuss this, and with the prospect of it being ratified, an assassination team, set up through a special section of M16, was despatched to Spandau to kill Hess, but make it look like

suicide, it is claimed.

Dr Thomas claims evidence that a contingency plan - Exercise Royston - had been in place for such a

scenario. Put into execution, it became Operation Royston. Thomas also claims to have evidence that a bare 171/2 minutes after the death of Prisoner No 7, well before even a post mortem could take place, RAF Lyneham was alerted to receive Prisoner No 7's crated-up body. This plan, however, had to be scuppered.

With evidence that Prisoner No 7 was more likely to have been executed than to have committed suicide, Dr Thomas subsequently persuaded the Crown Prosecution Service to investigate his claims.

After a six-month-long Scotland Yard inquiry the matter was mysteriously dropped. The main investigating officer had been denied access to certain Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence files.

Questions on the matter in the Commons by Cardiff West Labour MP Rhodri Morgan have meanwhile been blocked. It may well be at least another 20 years before the assertions in Rudolf Hess, The Appalling Truth, can be proved or disproved. As matters stand at the moment, it will not be until 2017 that the remaining Hess files, along with Special Operation Executive (SOE) files detailing their operations in Sweden in 1941, are released.