Kenyans outraged as British soldiers cleared of rape

ARCHER'S POST, Kenya, Dec 15 (Reuters) Kenyans today reacted angrily to a report by Britain's Defence Ministry which said there was no reliable evidence to support charges its soldiers raped hundreds of women in the east African country.

Investigators conducted a three-year probe into allegations by 2,187 mostly Maasai and Samburu women that they were raped by British troops training in Kenya beginning in the 1970s.

The probe concluded there was ''no reliable evidence to support any single allegation''.

''Much of the information provided by the Kenyan and medical authorities appeared to have been fabricated,'' a Defence Ministry spokeswoman in London said yesterday.

In Archer's Post, a dusty Kenyan trading centre bordering the northern districts of Isiolo and Samburu, about 100 women demanded fresh investigations.

''It is a sad moment because the British army does not accept that they are responsible for the sexual attacks against us,'' Rebecca Lolosoli of the Umoja Waso women group told Reuters.

In August 2003, the women travelled to the capital Nairobi and demonstrated outside the British High Commission officers carrying their mixed race children as evidence of the assaults.

''Children whose fathers are white dot the entire landscape,'' Kenyan Member of Parliament Paul Muite told reporters, adding the report's conclusions did not mean there was no rape.

''From the evidence we have independently gathered so far, the Royal Military Police were more intent on covering up than in genuine impartial investigations,'' he said.

Muite said a civil case instituted against the British government to secure compensation for the alleged victims would still go on.

The women also vowed to continue pressing for compensation and called for halting British training exercises in the area.

''The whole investigation was unfair from the beginning. It was wrong for the British to investigate themselves,'' said Mary Melaiyan, who was protesting the decision.

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