Martyn Day hits wall in Kenyan rape cases as evidence proves unreliable

Martyn Day, the solicitor handling the rape claims brought by Kenyan women against the UK army, said his case has reached an impasse because the UK has denied him access to vital Kenyan police records.

This follows the issuing of contradictory statements by the UK over the validity of the claims.

Some 650 Kenyan women have given evidence to Day, of Leigh Day & Co. But he told The Laywer he has hit a dead end as the UK and Kenyan authorities have not released police records of reports of the alleged rapes. This evidence is vital for Day, who is struggling to separate the false claims from the genuine ones.

Last month the UK High Commissioner in Nairobi Mark Norton stated that all police records alleging rape of the 650 women by troops during the 1980s and 1990s were forgeries.

However, this has been contradicted in a letter, seen by The Lawyer, from Brigadier Maurice Nugent of the Royal Military Police (RMP) to Day, saying that "we are confident the evidence has not been fabricated [although] a large proportion of the manuscript entries in the police records appear to have been forged".

Day said that Norton either misunderstood what had been told to him by RMP officers investigating the claims, or had been "mischievous".

"We need to get hold of police records to be able to get our forensics in," said Day. "At the start, the Kenyan government said they would support us, but have not given us access yet. I think the British Government is being quite bad… to come here and say the records are forged, which is not correct."

Day has access to documents which illustrate that during the 1980s the UK army was told of the rapes but allegedly failed to act upon these reports.

Nugent is due to send a military police officer to recover these originals from Day.