Britain Used Torture in Kenya & Bahrain

by Stephen Millies
Published Feb 26, 2011 10:20 AM

British Colonel Ian Henderson spent 30 years as head of Bahrain’s secret police until he was forced to retire in February 1998.

George Galloway told the House of Commons on June 3, 1997: “Henderson is known as the butcher of Bahrain. He is the head of the security services and director of intelligence and has gathered around him the kind of British dogs of war, mercenaries, whose guns and electric shock equipment are for hire to anyone who will pay the price.”

“His men allegedly detained and tortured thousands of anti-government activists,” wrote Tony Thompson in the June 30, 2002, London Observer. “Their activities are said to have included the ransacking of villages, sadistic sexual abuse and using power drills to maim prisoners. On many occasions they are said to have detained children without informing their parents, only to return them months later in body bags.”

Henderson got his start in the British Empire’s war against Kenya’s Land and Freedom Army, also known as the “Mau Mau.” He hunted down and captured the last of the Mau Mau leaders — Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi — on Oct. 21, 1956.

The freedom fighter was hanged on Feb. 18, 1957, in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison outside Nairobi. To this day the British Government refuses to reveal where Field Marshal Kimathi is buried.

During the war a million Kenyans were thrown into concentration camps. U.S. “foreign aid” helped pay for Embakasi Airport, which was built by prisoners with their bare hands. No wonder Henderson was “known as the torturer-in-chief.” (Nairobi Daily Nation, April 15, 2004)

Queen Elizabeth II knighted Henderson-the-torturer and made him a “Commander of the British Empire” in 1986. Why isn’t this war criminal prosecuted?

People in Bahrain are fighting for freedom. They’re also avenging the Mau Mau.
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