Another official attempt at a cover-up has gone awry. Claims by Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office that it had misplaced hundreds of thousands of documents relating to the torture of Kenyans suspected of involvement in the Mau Mau rebellion have turned out to be false. The documents, covering about 110 feet of shelf space, were tracked down by a determined FCO official, Edward Inglett, who had been told by colleagues that the huge cache of files could not be found.

A case brought in the London High Court by four elderly Kenyans against the British government for torture during colonial rule precipitated the search. After Inglett’s discovery, the FCO apologised profusely to the Court and to the Kenyan claimants. The files include a letter from Police Commissioner Colonel Arthur Young, who was seconded from London, to Evelyn Baring, the Governor of Kenya, describing cases of prisoners dying due to deliberate ill-treatment. Baring ignored the letter and Young resigned four days later.

Foreign Secretary William Hague has pledged to open all the files and hire an independent expert to oversee the process. Sparking much diplomatic interest will be documents relating to the treatment of Hussein Onyango Obama, an anti-colonial activist who was gaoled in Kenya in 1949-51 and reportedly tortured. Now dead, he was the grandfather of United States President Barack Obama, and a staunch critic of colonial officials’ treatment of Africans.