British Soldiers Cleared of Rapes in Kenya

A three-year investigation yesterday cleared British soldiers of the alleged rape of hundreds of Kenyan women over three decades. The Ministry of Defence said some evidence provided by the Kenyan authorities was fabricated, but a Nairobi human rights group described the investigation as "a joke".

The Royal Military Police interviewed 2,187 mostly Masai and Samburu women in the £3m inquiry who said they were assaulted by soldiers on training exercises in Kenya, and found more than 200 worthy of further investigation. But the military police said the women's testimony was unreliable. "There is no reliable evidence to support any single allegation made which would stand up to the Crown Prosecution Service evidence test and lead to a prosecution against any named individual," it said.

Some of the women carried mixed-race children to a demonstration in Nairobi as "evidence" of the alleged rapes. But officials said they suspected that some were prostitutes who conceived the children after soldiers paid to have sex with them.

The RMP concluded that dozens of complaints of rape recorded in Kenyan police files were forged. Among the discrepancies were accusations against army units that were not in Kenya at the time. But British officials said investigators concluded that not all the claims were bogus.

Johnson ole Kaunga, of the Impact human rights group, told Reuters the women would now seek justice in local courts. "There are a number of cases with concrete evidence," he said, adding: "They have spent three years and millions of British taxpayers' money just to tell us what they have always said. This is a joke."