A group of 650 Kenyan women who claim they were raped by British soldiers have won legal aid to sue the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in a UK court.
The women, from rural Masai tribal lands, tell harrowing stories of gang rape, unwanted pregnancies, ruined lives and mixed race children shunned by the community. They allege that the MoD did nothing to stop systematic rape by soldiers despite complaints dating back almost 30 years.
The case could cost the MoD millions of pounds if it is shown that officers failed to control their men during the exercises, which take place in remote areas of Kenya each year. The women’s solicitor, Martyn Day, said there was documentary evidence that their complaints had been brought to the attention of British commanding officers in Kenya, but little sign that anything was done.
The women have produced medical records detailing hospital admissions dating back to the 1970s. And Day discovered minutes of meetings between Masai tribal leaders, Kenyan district officials and British army officers discussing the rapes.
Day said he has minutes of a meeting in October 1983, during which British army officials promised investigations and action. Almost two decades later, the women say, the rapes were still taking place. The most recent alleged attacks are said to have occurred between November 1999 and 2000.
Some of the women allege that they were subjected to gang rape by groups of soldiers who treated the attacks virtually as a leisure activity.
Day told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: ”When the women first came to see me about six months ago, I couldn’t believe it could be true. But the more we went to police stations, clinics, hospitals and local government offices, the more we were able to find contemporaneous documentary evidence to show the women had been complaining about the rapes over a 30-year period.
”What really worries us is that, despite the fact that this was reported for the first time in 1977 to the British commanding officers at the time, no attempt was ever made, so far as we can ascertain, to try to stop this happening.”
Day said that many of the 650 women had come forward after news of a possible court case became public. He acknowledged that some of them may be motivated by a desire for compensation money.
But he said that the stigma of admitting to being a rape victim was so great in Kenya that the women had a lot to lose by joining the action. Some had been thrown out of their homes by husbands and fathers.
Day said it would be difficult to take legal action against individual soldiers at this stage.
”One of the big issues is going to be finding the individual soldiers who carried out these terrible atrocities. After so many years, it’s going to be very, very difficult,” he said.
”The royal military police is investigating some of these matters, but it is very difficult for them when the evidence has gone so cold, so for us the primary case is against the British army. The fact that they failed systematically to ever take steps to stop this happening is the primary source of our case for civil compensation.”
The defence minister, Adam Ingram, said it would be ”inappropriate” for him to discuss the cases at this point.
In a statement to the BBC, he said: ”The allegations are the subject of a continuing investigation by the special investigation branch of the royal military police. It is being conducted in cooperation with the Kenyan authorities and they are asking anybody with information to pass it on.”
Last year the MoD paid out £4,5-million (about $7,4-million) in compensation to Masai people maimed and killed by discarded army ordnance. – Guardian Unlimited Â