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....