The body of a Kenyan girl, who allegedly died after she was raped by a British soldier, will be exhumed at the weekend for forensic analysis, the British High Commission said on Friday, insisting that justice would be pursued till the end.
On September 20, a Kenyan court ordered the body of 16-year-old Mantoi Lekoloi Kaunda to be exhumed, six years after she was buried, for analysis to find out if she died as a result of an alleged rape by a British soldier in 1998.
The remains of Lekoloi, who was buried at her home in Archer’s Post in eastern Kenya, one of the ranges where British soldiers carried out exercises, are due to be exhumed on Saturday, said an official in the high commission.
”The UK ministry of defence takes these allegations extremely seriously and is determined to get to the truth. This is an unparalleled investigation, in terms of size and scope, and is being conducted with permission and full assistance of authorities in Kenya,” the commission said in a statement.
”This is absolutely vital to ensure that justice is done,” it said, adding that it was too early to predict the time-frame of the probe or predict its outcome.
”The investigation is complicated by the length of time since some of the alleged incidents took place, the remoteness of the areas involved, and the volume of information that has been gathered,” the statement explained.
Lekoloi’s case was highlighted as investigators drawn from Britain’s Royal Military Police Special Investigations Branch and Kenya police are probing alleged rapes over the course of 30 years of hundreds of Maasai and Samburu women whose cases have been taken up by a British lawyer.
The court ordered the exhumation on the basis that the remains of Lekoloi, who was allegedly raped when she was six months pregnant, would be reburied immediately after the analysis. – Sapa-AFP