UK to expect more colonial-era compensation claims

Source: The Guardian

The government is expecting compensation claims from across Britain's former empire following Thursday's announcement that payments are being made to thousands of Kenyans imprisoned and tortured during the bloody Mau Mau insurgency that preceded the country's independence.

The Foreign Office has already been put on notice that it will be receiving a claim from lawyers representing a number of Cypriots who allege that they too were mistreated during the island's decolonisation conflict in the 1950s.

Further claims are expected from Kenya, and more may be lodged by citizens of several other former colonies.

While announcing the settlement, and expressing the government's "sincere regret" for the way the British colonial authorities treated their prisoners, the foreign secretary, William Hague, warned that future litigation may be resisted in the same way as in the Kenyan case. Government lawyers battled for four years to keep the claim out of the courts before admitting defeat.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/06/uk-more-colonial-era-compensation-claims