British Kenyan 'torture' files

British Kenyan 'torture' files 'guilty secret': report

Four Kenyans who say they were tortured by British officials in the 1950s are seen in front of London's High Court (AFP/File, Carl Court)

9 May 2011 - Hidden documents about the British army's suppression of the 1950s Mau Mau uprising in Kenya were treated by officials as a "guilty secret", an internal review found Monday.

Four elderly Kenyans who claim they were tortured are taking legal proceedings against the former colonial power -- a move which triggered the investigation into hundreds of hidden files that were spirited out of Kenya just before independence in 1963.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague commissioned diplomat Anthony Cary to conduct an internal review to find out why the files had not been released.

Some 1,500 such files relate to the Mau Mau uprising, while there are 8,800 files which were transferred to London from Britain's colonies upon independence.

Cary, Britain's former high commissioner to Canada, said he found that some Foreign Office officials had chosen to "ignore" demands from the Kenyans' lawyers in 2005 and 2006 to make the files public. {continued}