David Anderson: New evidence linking two British officers to the murder of 22 Kenyans in the spring of 1953
The United Kingdom's defence ministry has categorically refused to release papers, which historians say may sort out the 53-year-old whodunit of a massacre involving UK troops at the height of the war against Mau Mau liberation fighters in Kenya. In an all out offensive to trounce the Mau Mau liberation fighters who the British then labelled 'insurgents', the Somali members of a loyalist militia group recruited to fight an all-too-powerful resistance and audacious guerrilla army, slaughtered 20 Mau Mau men in the Chuka region of the country.
Oxford historian Professor David Anderson, whose studies unearthed new evidence linking two British officers to the murder of 22 Kenyans in the spring of 1953, told reporters that the incident was "the tip of the iceberg" in a bloody campaign that Britain should be ashamed of. Anderson and his team of academics researchers confirmed that two British junior officers were with the Somalis at the time of the massacre. One of the two is believed to be dead, but the second is still living in the UK. The vital evidence in the case, the only data not recorded in Kenyan National Archives documents that detailed the compensation hearing held after the massacre, is in statements made by three local women eyewitnesses and ten of the Somali soldiers.
The statements are the missing part of a file and are wanted by Anderson's team under the Freedom of Information Act, but the MoD has still declined to release them. The only eyewitnesses to the period of the massacre tracked down by Anderson and the BBC Radio 4's Document programme were two men, Celestino Mbare, now 84, and Jediel Nyaga, 80. Mbare told BBC Radio 4 programme how he had gone along to identify the dead, 20 of whom were from his own village. Nyaga recounted to the BBC: "They were innocent people who went to help soldiers and soldiers shot them." The UK's ministry of Defence decision on the documents shuts the door to a trial or a public enquiry, although it tacitly admits that a crime did take place and has gone on to pay blood money to the families of the murdered men. The MoD is reported to have told one of Anderson's associate that it did not want to release the missing 11 pages of testimony because it was too graphic and upsetting.
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Oxford historian Professor David Anderson, whose studies unearthed new evidence linking two British officers to the murder of 22 Kenyans in the spring of 1953, told reporters that the incident was "the tip of the iceberg" in a bloody campaign that Britain should be ashamed of. Anderson and his team of academics researchers confirmed that two British junior officers were with the Somalis at the time of the massacre. One of the two is believed to be dead, but the second is still living in the UK. The vital evidence in the case, the only data not recorded in Kenyan National Archives documents that detailed the compensation hearing held after the massacre, is in statements made by three local women eyewitnesses and ten of the Somali soldiers.
The statements are the missing part of a file and are wanted by Anderson's team under the Freedom of Information Act, but the MoD has still declined to release them. The only eyewitnesses to the period of the massacre tracked down by Anderson and the BBC Radio 4's Document programme were two men, Celestino Mbare, now 84, and Jediel Nyaga, 80. Mbare told BBC Radio 4 programme how he had gone along to identify the dead, 20 of whom were from his own village. Nyaga recounted to the BBC: "They were innocent people who went to help soldiers and soldiers shot them." The UK's ministry of Defence decision on the documents shuts the door to a trial or a public enquiry, although it tacitly admits that a crime did take place and has gone on to pay blood money to the families of the murdered men. The MoD is reported to have told one of Anderson's associate that it did not want to release the missing 11 pages of testimony because it was too graphic and upsetting.