Claims of torture in Kenya were exaggerated

I READ your recent article concerning the £20m hand out to ex-Mau Mau “freedom fighters” with great interest.

There can be no moral justification for the torture and ill treatment of these prisoners by the then authorities.

I lived and worked in the beautiful country of Kenya during the emergency and am reasonably well informed about the period. I find it difficult to understand the logic which enables our Government to justify this settlement.

Serious crimes were perpetrated against some of these prisoners but the number has undoubtedly been grossly exaggerated. There is documented evidence for all who take the trouble to find it, that these “patriots” murdered, raped, tortured and abused in the most foul, inhuman and bestial manner, thousands of their own tribe. The massacre at Lari being a case in point, when in one dreadful night over 200 elderly men and women as well as children were butchered with machetes and thrown, some still living, into their burning huts.

Was any compensation offered to these many African victims of Mau Mau by their own government? I think not. The fact that Kenyan authorities refused to acknowledge Mau Mau after the country gained independence in 1962 speaks volumes. Just as a thought, perhaps the firm of lawyers who handled this case so assiduously could consider donating some of the £6m that they are stated to have earned, to fund reparations to the far more deserving cases of the innocent Kikuyu people whose lives were devastated by these people.

I wonder who will be the next tribe, nation or revolutionary group our political masters will deem it necessary to apologise to, or compensate for ancient wrongs, real or imagined?

The past really was a different country and things were done differently there. Surely there must come a time when lines should be drawn?

I seem to recall some Scandinavians receiving very rough handling here some time ago ....