LONDON (Reuters) – Lawyers for Britain’s Foreign Office tried yesterday to get a test case brought by four elderly Kenyans against colonial atrocities during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising thrown out on the first day of hearings.
Robert Jay, counsel for the government, argued at London’s High Court that legal responsibility for what happened in detention camps between 1952 and 1961 had been transferred to the Kenyan republic upon independence in 1963.
He also said the alleged incidents were so long ago that all