Mau Mau goes legit

last updated 8 January 2015

Nairobi

Kenya registered the Mau Mau anti-colonial group as an official organization this week, a move that paves the way for the surviving fighters to sue Britain. Mau Mau was a rebel group, made up mostly of ethnic Kikuyus, that killed several dozen British soldiers and white settlers during the 1950s, when Kenya was a British colony. The British government responded by detaining more than 70,000 Kikuyus in prison camps for years, and hanging more than 1,000. The resulting civil war ultimately brought Kenya independence in 1963, but Mau Mau remained a banned group. The Mau Mau Trust is now suing the British government for compensation, saying many of its fighters were tortured during the war.