JUSTICE IN KENYA

TRIAL COWS MAU MAU

The is the fourth in a series by Jack Scott Sun writer, on the Mau Mau war in Kenya.

Mary 12, 1953

NYERI, Kenya. –The most vicious of killers, as any courthouse reporter will tell you, looks like a bum when his time comes to answer to the law. The killers of the secret society known as Mau Mau are no exception. 

Behind the small, concrete-block Kenya police post here in Nyeri there is another rough building which contains two whitewashed cells. They are each about 12 or 15 feet square. 

If you look through the thick horizontal bars of the iron doors you will see black men standing in a mass in these two windowless rooms, perhaps 20 in each. They make not a sound, but stand there looking stolidly ahead, waiting their turn to face the music of what is still a reasonable facsimile of British justice.

'Frightened Terrorists'

It is very early in the day j after a night of rain. There j is a soft freshness to the i morning. 

Across the road a foursome of women, probably the wives of British officers, are teeing j off on one of the holes of the Nyeri golf course. From the police post you may hear the I "knock" of a well-hit ball and j watch it soaring away down I the dewy fairway. 

It is a' characteristic contrast between the reality of a countryside of inspiring beau-ty and the unreality of the ' Mau Mau terror that has thrown a shadow across it. 

These prisoners are to be separated into groups for trials or, in the more serious l cases, for preliminary hear-j ings in the magistrate's court i a hundred yards away, i 

The iron doors are thrown open. They are commanded to line up in front of the small cell block. Their bare feet make sucking noises in the soft chocolate mud of the compound. They line up in two rows. 

Surely these can't be the dreaded " terrorists " who strike in the night and slash at the lifeless bodies of their victims with the keen blades of the panga and simi? 

They are short, small-boned men with skinny legs, very black. Almost all of them are dressed only in ancient, cast-off British Army greatcoats, many of them with so many crude patches of canvas and cloth that they are like some sort of mad harlequin's costume. 

Several are badly frightened. They roll their eyes nervously. Some reach out fum-blingly to hold the hand of the man next in line like children.

Informer Locked Up Too 

I stood with an assistant inspector of the Kenya police very natty and Kiplingesque in his sharply-creased knee-lorig shorts and his stiff, peaked cap. He pointed out one of the natives, a man I whose mouth hung open vapidly. 

"We suspect him of having i. hand in the Mickeljohn case (in which a white man was killed and his wife badly wounded), but we're still collecting evidence," he said. "He's a bad hat, we know that. He'll swing with the rest of them." 

He turned away from the line of men and whispered, "Notice the fellow second from the end. One of our informers. Tipped us off on most of this gang. Of course we had to lock him up with the rest of 'em. If they knew he was working for us chap's life wouldn't be worth . a farthing." 

He turned again to the line and called out something in Swahiii, one of the smallest -f the prisoners stepped out of line and walked towards us, his eyes downcast. He was dressed in dirty khaki shorts and a faded, torn blue sweater. He had an intelligent, sensitive face. Please Turn to Page Two See "Mau Maus"

Mau Maus Cowed

"This is Kiruri (son of Kdiramgu," the assistant inspector said, "He doesn't I.now what he's in for." The native looked blankly over our shoulders. 

Kiruri turned out to be the first " native arrested under a new ruling that the death penalty may be imposed for unlawful possession of firearms, ammunition or explosives. This is one of the rougher laws in Kenya's Emergency Regulations (previously the maximum sentence for possession of fire arms was life imprison- menu. 

Since Kiruri Jiad volunteered the information that he owned a Webbley .45 and had taken the police to the place where it was hidden, it was not the kind of clean case the police might have liked to inaugurate the new Justice law. When I last heard of him Kiruri was still in cells waiting for the authorities to decide whether to press the charge. 

Magistrate's court was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. and I walked across to another concrete building with a red-tiled roof, again facing incongruously on the serene pastures of the links.

 The court is in a room perhaps 30 feet square with bare plaster walls. The magistrate's bench, under the familiar coat of arms, is of varnished plywood, as is the prisoner's dock at the rear of the room. 

Between the two are six rows of straight-back benches for spectators. The Mau Mau trials are now accepted as a routine part of life in Kenya and I was the only person there not actively engaged in the procedure.

Seven Years for Oaths 

There were six Mau Maus in the prisoner's box staring ahead without expression. I jotted down the names of three of them listed in the charge sheet: Kariuki (son of) Githure, Mwendia (son of) Karioki, Ndungu (son of) Wachua. 

They were jointly accused, in the formal language of the charge, with "Compelling a person to take an unlawful oath by intimidation, contrary to Section 62A (2) of the Penal Code." (These six were remanded on this morning and I did not see the conclusion of the case, but learned later that they were each sentenced to seven years imprisonment.) 

In an "el" of the courthouse was an open-air compound where other prisoners sat awaiting their turn. They were a hapless, woeful-looking bunch, sitting on their haunches, some wrapped in grey blankets, many with their heads dropped forward between their knees, but looking up apprehensively at any movement.

It was hot and windless in this enclosure and the men's legs seemed to have been torn by bushes, were covered with flies. 

Among them was a young woman, who had been found in a prohibited area. Her face was like something carved in dark wood and she sat in the gravel with her long-fingered rands folded across her breasts, occasionally modestly adjusting a dress made of sacking. 

These prisoners were all charged either with administering the unlawful oath of the Mau Mau or with "being present and consenting!' to the administration of the oath, which the law holds is an equally serious crime. 

They were indolently guarded by native police who wore red fezzes with a black tassle, blue sweaters with leather epaulets, khaki shorts and though bare-foot, blue puttees from knee to ankle. They carried Sten guns or Enfield rifles.

British Justice Upheld 

I had picked a bad day to see the courts in operation since the six were to be remanded and so I arranged to talk with Magistrate J. R. McCready in his chambers. 

The magistrate is one 6f those men you occasionally meet here who convinces you that there is perhaps "some hope, after all, of white colonials working out a square deal with a, black population which, in Kenya, outnumbers them 30 to one. .; ; . 

He has the appearance and the manner of the actor, Claude Rains. The . law is everything to him. " ...

 In the week before, I had talked to many white men who are in favor of "summary justice" for the Mau Mau or, more bluntly, "stringing them up as soon as they're caught in public hangings." . 

It was reassuring now to hear this man's quiet confidence in the more traditional methods of British justice. 

In the six months since the Emergency was declared he had tried 82 cases, some of them of several days duration, while his assistant, a second class magistrate who handles the "small charges" had gone through more than 700 cases, most of them natives charged with carrying a panga without a permit. 

"We are still doing our level best, to see that no one is found guilty except on the evidence," the magistrate said. 

"Some of the Emergency regulations . are harsh in theory a man might be sent to prison for two years merely for carrying a club but we have all the safeguards that you normally associate with British courts. 

"My own powers have been raised so that I may impose a life imprisonment, but cases which involve capital punishment must be heard by the Supreme Court and any sentence of more than 12 months is reviewed by the higher Court.

Oath Given by Force 

"The penalty for carrying a panga," he went on, "is a maximum of two years, but we weigh the circumstances most carefully and the majority involve merely a fine or perhaps two months in prison. 

"The maximum sentence for administering the Mau Mau oath is 10 years. You must realize that this is a more 6erious charge than it appears. Occasionally it will involve the forcible administering of an oath that binds the man to killing on orders of the Mau Mau. . 

"If a man reports that he has involuntarily taken the oath within five days of the ceremony he may not be charged. This is a safeguard so that no native may be victimized. 

"The majority of convictions come from the testimony of the natives themselves. We had a case here the other day of an old man and his wife who were dragged out of their beds, strung up by ropes around their necks and beaten with rhinoceros whips. 

"They obviously had little choice about taking the oath. They shot off like an arrow to the police when it was all over. Eight went down on that." 

It is almost unknown, the magistrate said, for a Mau Mau to plead guilty and, while few of them are represented by counsel, the trials involve a considerable defense. 

"Their standard of defense is remarkably high," the magistrate said, "higher, I would say, than with a European of a comparative class. They are very quick to appreciate any legal loopholes. I think I may say in truth that these are trials in every 6ense of the word."