Upon the conclusion of World War II, Poland remained under Soviet military control. Approximately 60,000 soldiers of the Home Army had been arrested by the NKVD. Some 50,000 of them were deported to the gulags and prisons deep in the Soviet Union. After several months of brutal interrogation and torture, 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State were sent to jails in the USSR after a staged trial on trumped-up charges in Moscow. The Soviet Army Northern Group of Forces was stationed in the country until 1956. The persecution of the anti-Nazi resistance members was only a part of the reign of Stalinist terror in Poland. In the period of 1944–56, approximately 300,000 Polish people had been arrested, or up to two million, according to differing accounts. There were 6,000 political death sentences issued, the majority of them carried out. It is estimated that over 20,000 people died in communist prisons including those executed "in the majesty of the law" such as Witold Pilecki or Emil August Fieldorf.