AN ARMY officer will go on trial today charged with torture.
Colonel Kumar Lama, 47, of St Peters Road, St Leonards, is accused of inflicting severe pain or suffering when he was acting in an official capacity.
The offences are said to have taken place between April 15 2005 and May 1 2005, and April 15 2005 and October 31 2005, at the Gorusinghe Army Barracks in Kapilvastu, Nepal.
Lama has pleaded not guilty to two counts of torture and the case will resume today at the Old Bailey.
The defendant, who has served in the Nepalese army since 1984, was in charge of the barracks at the time, during the Himalayan nation's decade-long Maoist insurgency.
The charges relate to two men, Janak Bahadur Raut and Karam Hussain.
Lama, who is on conditional bail, had been serving as a UN peacekeeper in South Sudan shortly before his arrest in 2013.
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