At the beginning of October 2012, a group of Kenyan veterans was given permission to sue the British government over torture in a historic high court ruling. Two British law firms are in engaged in a fierce hunt for former Mau Mau freedom fighters. Both Leigh Day and Tandem Legal are trying to hook in as many victims from Kenya’s pre-independence era as possible, with a view to suing the British government for compensation.
While Leigh Day has been pursuing the cases for close to five years, with the help of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and well-wishers, Tandem Legal and partners are going it alone. They appeared on the scene last year, after the high court in London ruled that the Mau Mau War Veterans’ Association had a legitimate right to make a compensation claim against the British government for acts of torture and imprisonment.
