Mau Mau veterans to sue Britain over torture and killings

[Waterstar]

Chris McGreal in Nairobi

Kenyan Mau Mau war veterans Generals Kassam Njogu, Njeru Mugo and Ndungu Gicheru. Photograph: Jacob Wire/EPA

An ageing group of former Mau Mau insurgents will launch legal action in the UK next week accusing the British army and colonial authorities of torturing or illegally killing thousands of Kenyans during the independence rebellion 50 years ago.

Lawyers acting for the Mau Mau veterans say they will serve the Foreign Office with a notice of intent to seek compensation for human rights abuses involving a group of about 10 Kenyans in what is being seen as a test case.

Those involved have given accounts of rape, systematic and prolonged beatings and other physical torture that caused permanent injury and starvation as part of a British policy to break the rebellion. Some also witnessed killings.

But if the case comes to court it is likely to divide Kenya by highlighting the part played in suppressing the Mau Mau by some Kenyans who went on to hold senior posts in government. The insurgents also killed many more black Kenyans than white settlers.

The claimants say they were held for years in detention camps during the seven years that followed Britain's declaration of the "Kenya emergency" in 1952.

Jane Muthoni Mara was 15 when she was arrested for supplying Mau Mau fighters with food. She says a white army officer ordered her torture, and that it was carried out by a black soldier who shoved a bottle into her vagina to force her to reveal the whereabouts of her brother, a member of the Mau Mau.

"There was a [Kenyan soldier] called Edward. He filled the bottle with hot water and then pushed it into my private parts with his foot. I screamed and screamed," she said. "Other women held at the camp were raped the same way. I have never forgotten it."

Another former detainee, M'Mucheke Mucheke Kioru, says he was beaten senseless on several occasions by an officer.

"He ordered me to lie down with my face down and severely beat me all over my back from the lower spinal cord. I was beaten until sperms were coming out of my penis like a stream. I believe this is when I lost the ability to have children," he said.

The Kenyan Human Rights Commission, which is backing the former prisoners' legal claim, says about 160,000 people were detained in dire conditions and that tens of thousands were tortured to get them to renounce their oath to the Mau Mau. Britain set up the camps in response to the brutal killings of white settlers, including women and children.

After the emergency was lifted in 1961, an official report determined that 32 whites had been killed by the insurgency while more than 11,000 Africans died, many of them civilians. Others put the death toll much higher.

Lawyers for the claimants are likely to call as a witness a US academic, Caroline Elkins, whose acclaimed book, Britain's Gulag, estimates that up to 100,000 Kenyans died of torture, abuse and neglect in the British camps.

The British authorities also hanged hundreds of Mau Mau members for offences other than killing, such as illegal possession of arms or associating with people illegally carrying weapons.

Martin Day, the British lawyer representing the former detainees, said torture was not carried out by just a few rogue soldiers, but was rather the policy of the colonial authorities. "In torturing people under their control, or allowing torture to take place, the British were negligent, they committed assault, they breached the European convention on human rights that was in effect at the time and they caused very severe suffering," he said.

A spokeswoman for the British High Commission in Nairobi, Charley Williams, said the government would contest the lawsuit. "If and when legal proceedings are brought forward we would defend them vigorously on two grounds. First, all claims and responsibilities pass to the Kenyan government on independence and, second, after 50 years or so it would be impossible for there to be a fair trial of the issues," she said.

Mr Day conceded that it would not be an easy case to win.

"It's a tough case, no question about it, because of the length of time that has passed and because the British government will be worried about the precedent it will set," he said. "But it's a case that absolutely has to be brought. It's very important for the victims to have a historic acknowledgement by the British government that what it did was very wrong."

[Waterstar]

15 July 2012 Last updated at 19:39 ET

Veterans of 1950s Mau Mau uprising in Kenya seek UK damages

Three Kenyans who allege they were tortured by the British colonial authorities during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising are to begin a damages case at the High Court in London later.

It is the latest stage of a legal battle by veterans of the rebellion to sue the UK government.

Hundreds of elderly Kenyans claim they were the victims of brutality at the hands of British colonial officials.

The government has previously said it was not liable.

Papers in the test case were first served on the UK in 2009.

Last year a High Court judge ruled the claimants - Paulo Muoka Nzili, Wambuga Wa Nyingi and Jane Muthoni Mara - did have an arguable case.

BBC World Affairs correspondent Peter Biles says the three Kenyans, who are now in their 70s and 80s, will be giving evidence in pursuit of damages.

This week's hearing will have access to an archive of 8,000 secret files that were sent back to Britain after Kenya gained its independence in 1963.

The Foreign Office says the Mau Mau issue remains deeply divisive, and this period of Kenyan history caused a great deal of pain for many on all sides.

It has indicated it would defend the claim "given the length of time elapsed and the complex legal and constitutional questions the case raises".

According to the claimants' solicitors, Leigh Day and Co, ministers will be now arguing that the claims are time barred and should be thrown out by the High Court.

The claimants are being supported by the Kenyan government and three academic experts on the so-called Kenya Emergency, which lasted from 1952-60, have made lengthy statements in support of their allegations.

A fourth claimant, Ndiku Mutwiwa Mutua, has died since the High Court ruling in July last year that the test case could go ahead.

[Waterstar]

Rounded up: Mau Mau suspects in concentration camps

Mau Mau torture files were 'guilty secret'

Documents revealing the torture of Mau Mau Kenyans directed by the British authorities were a "sort of guilty secret," a report says.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said the papers should now be made public.

The internal review found some Foreign Office officials had chosen to ignore the documents' existence.

It comes as the High Court is due to rule on a compensation case brought by four Kenyans over alleged human rights abuses in the 1950s and 1960s.

The documents give further details of what ministers in London knew about how the colony was attempting to crush the rebellion that paved the way to independence.

Many of them, which were released by the High Court last month, were only recently found in the Foreign Office's own archives after years of investigations by academics.

The papers were brought to the UK when Kenya became independent but, unlike others, were never made public in the National Archives. Until recently, they were in boxes kept at the Hanslope Park archives near Milton Keynes.

In a written statement released last Thursday, Mr Hague said it was time to make the files public through the National Archives, "subject only to legal exemptions".'Too difficult'

Former British High Commissioner to Canada Anthony Cary, who conducted the review, found there was confusion about the status of the files, but this only explained the failure up to a point.

But he said that while some officials realised their importance, they chose to "ignore" their existence following three Freedom of Information requests from the Kenyans' lawyers in 2005 and 2006.

Mr Cary said: "It was perhaps convenient to accept the assurances of predecessors that the migrated archives were administrative and/or ephemeral, and did not need to be consulted for the purposes of FOI requests, while also being conscious of the files as a sort of guilty secret, of uncertain status and in the "too difficult" tray."

Adding that officials at the Foreign Office need urgently to review all its documents, he said: "The migrated archives saga reminds us that we cannot turn a blind eye to any of our holdings.

"All information held by the FCO should have been retained by choice rather than inertia, and must be effectively managed from a risk perspective."'Appalling conditions'

Four Kenyans - three men and one woman aged in their 70s and 80s - are the lead claimants in the reparations case.

They want the UK government to acknowledge responsibility for atrocities committed by local guards in camps administered by the British in the pre-independence era.

The UK says the claim is not valid because of the amount of time since the abuses were alleged to have happened, and that any liability rested with the Kenyan authorities after independence in 1963.

Daniel Leader, counsel for their lawyers Leigh Day, said the report was significant because if the High Court ruled the British government was liable, it could not legitimately claim there was a time lag because it withheld crucial documents needed by his team.

Historians say the Mau Mau movement helped Kenya achieve independence. But their actions have also been blamed for crimes against white farmers and bloody clashes with British forces throughout the 1950s.

Veterans say they suffered barbaric treatment, including torture, as the British suppressed the rebellion.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission has said 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, and 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lYDuQ5jTvQ

[Waterstar]

Kenyans WERE tortured under our rule, says UK: Lawyer's admission as three Mau Mau survivors tell of horror

• Thought to be first public declaration by Government that brutality occurred
  
• Admission comes as three elderly Kenyans seeks damages in the High Court
  
• Could open floodgates for thousands of survivors to sue Britain for millions
  

By Sam Greenhill

PUBLISHED:18:43 EST, 17 July 2012 | UPDATED:18:43 EST, 17 July 2012

Ministers issued a dramatic confession yesterday that prisoners were tortured and sexually abused under British colonial rule in Kenya.

It is believed to be the first time the Government has made such a public declaration that atrocities were carried out ‘at the hands of the colonial administration’.

The admission came via a Whitehall lawyer addressing three elderly Kenyans who had gone to the High Court in London to demand damages and an apology

Now in their 80s, one of them told the court how he had been brutally castrated in a British detention camp during the Mau Mau rebellion – Britain’s bloodiest colonial war.

If the trio win their case, it would open the door to up to 20,000 Kenyan survivors of the Mau Mau purge to sue Britain for millions of pounds, using no-win, no-fee lawyers.

The Foreign Office is contesting the case because it officially denies liability and maintains the Kenyans have left it too late to make claims.

Yesterday, each of the three claimants walked slowly to the witness stand to deliver their graphic testimony.

But before Guy Mansfield, the Foreign Office’s QC, cross-examined them, he said: ‘I wish to make it clear that the British Government does not dispute that each of you suffered torture and other ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration.’

The Foreign Office is contesting the case because it officially denies liability and maintains the Kenyans have left it too late to make claims.

Yesterday, each of the three claimants walked slowly to the witness stand to deliver their graphic testimony.

But before Guy Mansfield, the Foreign Office’s QC, cross-examined them, he said: ‘I wish to make it clear that the British Government does not dispute that each of you suffered torture and other ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration.’

In July 1959, Enoch Powell attacked government policy over the Mau Mau. Speaking about the Hola camp, where 11 Mau Mau were killed after refusing to work, Mr Powell noted that some MPs had described the 11 as ‘sub-human’.

He told MPs: ‘I would say that it is a fearful doctrine, to stand in judgment on a fellow human being and to say, “because he was such-and-such, therefore the consequences which would otherwise flow from his death shall not flow”.’

A year ago, the three Kenyans were told by Mr Justice McCombe that they had ‘arguable cases in law’. He will now decide if a fair trial is possible. The Government says it is not.

Mr Mansfield said the Foreign Office faced ‘irredeemable difficulties’ defending itself because key witnesses had died. In a written submission, the FO declared: ‘After so long, it is simply impossible.’

Last night a FO spokesman said: ‘We understand the pain and grievance felt by those on all sides in the bloody events of the Kenya emergency period in Kenya.’