NEW YORK – It slices! It dices! It pierces and pokes! Pulls stubborn flesh from bone with a wrist flick!

And if that doesn't get your prisoner talking, perhaps the ornate chair with its spiked seat, back and armrests will do the trick.

Both the throne and tiny flesh ripper are part of a bounty of iron torture implements dating to the 16th century that will soon go on sale, but on one condition: The buyer must have morals as well as money – more than $3 million (U.S.).

At a time when the CIA interrogations of terrorist suspects is questioned, the anonymous seller wants the 252-item collection to fall into responsible hands, and serve as an indictment of torture.

A portion of the proceeds will go to Amnesty International and other human rights groups, said Arlan Ettinger of Guernsey's auction house in New York. The seller, a New England woman, was inspired by the debate over waterboarding and other CIA tactics to contact the auction house about a sale.

Ettinger's auctions have run the gamut from Soviet art and Elvis Presley's estate to Benny Goodman's clarinet and Titanic trinkets.

But how to hawk devices of blood and gore with names like the Tongue Tearer and the Roman Terrible Pincers without crossing the line into sinister profiteering?

"I didn't know how to respond," he said. He and the seller agreed on the need for care in choosing a buyer and directing some proceeds to anti-torture groups.

"It was one of those things that made me pause and say, `Wow,'" said Amnesty's Timothy Higdon, before he and others decided the publicity would "help tell the story of why torture is wrong."

Ettinger said, "It made perfect sense that you turn something terrible into something good."

His desk was covered with items like the Small Iron Spider, a flesh-tearing device. "This sweet little thing could grasp any part of one's body and do pain," he said, squeezing the handle to make the eight claw-like legs with needle-sharp tips open and close.

There were spiked collars, an axe and a perforated spoon "through which boiling water, oil or molten lead was poured onto various portions of the body," says a catalogue.

Leg weights were put beside the torture chair as shoes are put with a dress: to show how well they match. The weights added pounds to the person in the torture chair, driving the spikes deeper into the skin.

A heavy stone tablet designed for a torture chamber door had the inscribed admonishment: "Dark deeds make dark endings."

Elsewhere were an iron implement meant to be "affixed to the ears before they were cut off" and "a powerful iron foot-breaker" – as described in an 1890s catalogue.

It says the items originated in the region of the Holy Roman Empire that became Germany and that "every one of the barbarous implements (has) been in actual use."

The collection was kept at the Imperial Castle of Nuremberg in Bavaria until the late 1800s, when Britain's Earl of Shrewsbury bought it and sent it on tour.

More recently, a Norwegian living in the U.S. whose family had been persecuted by the Nazis bought the items. He died in the 1970s and an heir is behind the sale.

No auction date has been set because Ettinger hopes to find a single buyer. Keeping the items together, perhaps on display in a museum, would be the best way to educate people about human rights abuses, he said.

If one buyer isn't found, Ettinger will auction the items piece by piece, and try to sniff out motives before handing over antique items still capable of killing and maiming.

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"If we thought that someone had truly evil intentions, we wouldn't take the money," Ettinger said.



Los Angeles Times