A Belgian couple has gone on trial for keeping their four children in captivity for 10 years in horrible condition.
Parents Sebastien Hardenne and Isabelle Simon kept their three girls and a boy in a locked room at night and fed them through a small hole in the wall, it was heard in a court.
The couple used to thrash the kids with sticks, an iron bar and whips and tortured them with an electric fly swatter, Daily Mail reported.
The father urinated in the children's mouths and even practised 'water-boarding' torture similar to that allegedly used at America's Guantanamo Bay prison, the court was told. Two girls were also locked in a suitcase smeared with dog excrement and swung around a room.
The children -- now aged 11 to around 16 - are being cared for permanently by social services.
