Court Hears Of Policy To Discredit Abuse Claims During Mau Mau Uprising

Kabugi Njuma’s pockets were filled with mud. He was forced to run in 38C (100F)heat carrying a bucket laden with 36kgs (80lb) of earth on his head until he confessed to Mau Mau activities.

He died of a heart attack at Aguthi special detention camp in September 1958. His body bore bruises consistent with blows from a stick. The British colonial administration in Kenya recorded that he died of natural causes.

Ten days later, at Githiriri camp, Kibebe Mucharia was beaten to death by two interrogators with rubber strips torn from shredded tyres. He had already been convicted but would not confess to further crimes. The interrogators were sentenced to three years in prison for manslaughter.

At Mariiri detention camp a Mau Mau convict, who was sent to break stones in the quarry, collapsed and died after a fight with prison warders. A medical officer confirmed he had been struck on the head but recorded that his skull had an abnormally thin lining. The inquest returned a verdict of death by misadventure.

Such harrowing accounts of the deaths almost 60 years ago of detainees in colonial Kenya, and the long-suppressed records of official responses, have returned to haunt the Foreign Office.

For the past eight months, lawyers in court 17 at the Royal Courts of Justice in London have been describing the violence and suffering that occurred during the suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule.

The marathon trial examining the claims of almost 40,000 Kenyans seeking compensation for torture, rape, wrongful detention and forced labour is scheduled to continue into the autumn.

The lawsuit brought on behalf of survivors by Tandem Law, a Manchester-based firm of solicitors, against the Foreign Office is far larger than a previous class action brought by survivors of the 1950s colonial-era independence campaign. The government ultimately paid out £19.9m to settle the earlier claims.

But ministers are refusing to settle this larger claim, arguing that at this distance in time the issues cannot be tried fairly when those alleged to have inflicted the violence are now dead or untraceable.

The Observer reported at the time on allegations of mistreatment in detention and screening camps. In 1958, the newspaper received a letter from detainees at Mariiri complaining about severe beatings and two deaths.

The then editor, David Astor, raised the case with Alan Lennox-Boyd, then the colonial secretary, who played down the allegations, saying the first death had been from natural causes and no inquest was therefore required.

Simon Myerson QC, representing the Kenyan claimants, accused the Conservative government of the day of repeatedly trying to “kill” such bad news stories.

Lennox-Boyd’s letter to Astor, Myerson said, “begs a vast number of questions ... This was a few months after a detainee had died in a bucket drill, where he had been made to run in circles, in temperatures of 100F, carrying a bucket on his head.

“That too, was said to be death from natural causes. It would always have been open to Lennox-Boyd to say we want to know precisely what happened.”

Addressing the high court on Friday, Myerson said the minister’s response to Astor was typical of the government’s attempt to discredit its accusers. “The overarching point,” the barrister said, “is that the administration’s response is to circle the wagons and kill the story.

“In allegation after allegation, that never changes. It’s never ... ‘We need to know what’s going on here’. There are constant warnings from the army that one should never have an independent inquiry because as [the military commander, Lt Gen Sir George] Erskine himself said, you don’t really want to know what you would discover.

“It’s pretty clear that the atrocities that do occur may not be army policy. They are the actions of people who lose control or who should never have been put in charge of handling a gun.

“[Government] policy in London was not to ask the questions. It was to undermine the people who made these reports [alleging abuses]. It was easier to [deal with] the detainees by undermining them and saying they had a vested interest in telling lies.

“The effort was made in killing the story not in investigation. And that represents an attitude that is not interested in finding out what was really happening.”

Myerson cited extracts from the contemporary memoir of a local magistrate, Willoughby Thompson, who was in the office of Kenya’s governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, when the latter was on a telephone call with Lennox-Boyd.

He told the court: “Baring said these people were beaten to death [at another camp] and Lennox-Boyd says: ‘I don’t want to say that because I have already told the House [of Commons] something else.’”

Myerson continued: “That is an extraordinary position. It is about protecting the administration. I’m not suggesting he’s protecting himself. It’s about this is what we have done and we have to follow it through. [But] if you always look to excuse what happened rather than inquiring into what happened, then you are not doing your job.”

Next week a former district commissioner, now in his 90s, is scheduled to be the first witness to give evidence for the government in the case which is already scheduled to run into the autumn.

The hearing continues.