Nairobi — THE MAU MAU, the Kenyan freedom fighters of the 1950s referred to as "terrorists" by the colonial government, were hunted down and killed in cold blood by the British.

It is said that, in the mid 1950s, more than 13,000 Africans were killed in a single operation targeting Mau Mau fighters and civilians deemed to be sympathetic to them.

More than 200,000 were detained in camps in a bid to force them to abandon their nationalist goals. The Mau Mau uprising is a proving to have been a particularly shameful chapter in British military's history as more scandals involving its troops continue to be unearthed.

Kenyans who fought in the Mau Mau rebellion have taken the British government to court for alleged human-rights abuses. The Mau Mau Trust, a welfare group with more than half a million members, claims many veterans were tortured and illegally detained by the British. The trust, working with a group of lawyers, has taken over 6,000 depositions alleging numerous cases of human-rights abuse, including rape, torture, indiscriminate killing and theft of property. They claim that many of the fighters were regularly beaten and tortured by British forces. Some were battered with rifle butts, stabbed with broken bottles and forced into slave labour. The treatment is said to have left many mentally scarred and unable to walk again.

The Mau Mau veterans have also delivered a dossier cataloguing the abuses to the British High Commission in Nairobi. Their report, titled "Kenya: White Terror," talks of horrific incidents of torture and murders committed by white officials and local soldiers under their command. Other documented atrocities in the report include castration and blinding for defying captors, fatal whippings and rape by British soldiers.

There are also tales of daily killings at a slave labour camp in Embakasi, Nairobi, where the Mau Mau convicts were made to build the foundations for what is now Embakasi Airport.

In 2003, the Mau Mau Trust took legal action in Kenya, but failed to win the backing of President Mwai Kibaki's government. They then hired a London law firm, Leigh Day and Co, which specialises in injuries and foreign claims.

The case is being handled by Martyn Day, the lawyer who helped 233 cattle herders from Kenya's Samburu district win Ksh540 million ($6.9 million) in compensation for injuries they sustained from British army explosives left behind on training grounds in their region. He has also won compensation for British prisoners of war detained by the Japanese as well as for some Jews who were forced to work as slave labour for the Nazis.

This is the third time Kenya is seeking reparations from the British government for human-rights abuses. In another case, Mr Day is seeking compensation from the British government on behalf of 650 women from Samburu for rape and other human-rights abuses. The case is still pending.