Remember those Christians I mentioned earlier this week in Turkey who were killed in the offices of a Bible publisher? Well, it turns out that they weren't just murdered, they were tortured.

Dr. Murat Ugras, a spokesman for the Turgut Ozal Medical center, told the daily Hurriyet of hospital surgeons' fruitless efforts to save Ugur Yuksel, one of the three victims of the massacre at the Zirve (summit) publishing house, which distributed Christian literature.

"He had scores of knife cuts on his thighs, his testicles, his rectum, and his back," Ugras said. "His fingers were sliced to the bone.

"It is obvious that these wounds had been inflicted to torture him," he said.

The two others who were killed, Necati Aydin, pastor of Malatya's tiny Protestant community, and German Tilmann Geske, a Malatya resident with his wife and three children since 2003, were also tortured, press reports said.

The abuse lasted for three hours as the five men detained at the crime scene interrogated the three on their missionary activities, they said.

This is real torture; it makes the stuff that Andrew Sullivan complains about on a regular basis look like sixth grade camp.

Pray for the families of these martyrs. Ugur Yuksel, Necati Aydin and Tilmann Geske are with their savior today.