Britain’s military in Kenya: Allegations, immunity and a fight for justice | Human Rights
“Get away with it”
Memusi Lochede sits on a bed as her 24-year-old daughter Chaula lies motionless on the floor of their home in Archer’s Post, in the shadow of the training grounds. A donated wheelchair sits in the corner. Her daughter’s right leg is gone; metal rods brace a body so badly injured that she struggles to hold up her head.
“I have so much pain in my heart seeing my daughter in this condition,” 46-year-old Lochede tells Al Jazeera, wiping the drool from her daughter’s chin. “I feel ashamed that she needs so much help, and I don’t know how to help her.”
In 2019, Chaula, then a teenager, says she was hit by a speeding BATUK vehicle while crossing the road. Her leg was amputated and, her mother says, she was left paralysed and spent nearly three years in hospital.
A BATUK representative later came to see Lochede, she says.
“He apologised for what happened and said they don’t want a court case and would take care of my daughter — anything she needs,” she recounts.
The MOD said it “has not located a record of an approach having been made by a BATUK representative to the family.”
When her daughter was discharged, BATUK paid the hospital bills — without receipts or disclosing the amount — and disappeared, Lochede says. For years, Lochede called its community liaison officer, the Kenyan official tasked with receiving complaints like hers, who never answered. Eventually she gave up.
The MOD told Al Jazeera in August that BATUK is aware of the claim that one of its drivers “hit and injured a minor” in 2019, “resulting in permanent injuries”.
It said legal representatives have been in contact with the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights about the case and that a compensation offer has been made but the commission has not responded.
In late September, Al Jazeera asked the MOD what had been offered, when, and through whom. It did not provide those details, saying instead that BATUK “remains willing to engage with the child’s family, through an appropriate representative and on a without-prejudice basis,” but that “to date, we have been unable to establish contact with the family or an authorised representative”. Any resolution would have to rest on “verified medical and factual information” and, because the claim concerns a minor, be approved by a Kenyan court.
Ruth Getobai Nchagwa, a deputy director at the commission, says it has “never engaged with BATUK directly as our letters to them went unanswered”.
Chaula’s case “has not been addressed to date,” she notes, and the commission is not aware of any discussions about compensation. Lochede similarly says no one has ever approached her about compensation.
Before the accident, Lochede supported her five children by making beaded necklaces and selling them in Nairobi. Now she cannot leave her daughter’s side, and Chaula’s care costs about 30,000 Kenyan shillings ($230) a month — more than Lochede usually earns.
“It’s a shameful feeling to pick up the phone and call so many numbers for help, and no one picks up your call,” she explains, her lips quivering as she fights tears. “In those moments where I can’t provide for my daughter, I just lock myself inside the room and lie in my bed and cry.”
Her daughter, once healthy and active, now barely speaks.
“There are some days she wakes up and says just one word, like ‘food’ or ‘bathroom,’” Lochede says. “Those are the good days. Other days, she refuses to eat. I can see that she’s depressed and lonely. Inside, her soul is shattered.”
“These soldiers do these things because they know they can get away with it,” she adds sharply. “They know we don’t have money. We don’t have power. It’s extremely difficult for us to fight them.”
Cases like Chaula’s are far from isolated. Last year, a landmark two-year inquiry by Kenya’s parliamentary defence committee put decades of alleged BATUK abuses on the official record.
The 94-page report gathered testimony from hearings across Laikipia and Samburu, including a herder allegedly shot by a British sergeant; the alleged gang rape of 30 women at knifepoint in 1997; a boy who lost both arms and an eye to unexploded ordnance; and women with children their British fathers had never acknowledged.
BATUK declined to appear, citing its status and immunities under the defence arrangements. The committee condemned the refusal as contemptuous, calling it “emblematic of institutional contempt for the authority of Parliament and, by extension, the sovereignty of the people of Kenya”.
It concluded that BATUK “is increasingly seen as an occupying presence rather than a development partner”, with affected residents drawing parallels to colonial injustices. Witnesses told the committee that “suspected BATUK abuses are not only unpunished but actively covered up” — that whenever a BATUK member is implicated, police files often “go missing” and complainants are “intimidated into silence.”
An MOD spokesperson told Al Jazeera the UK “deeply” values its relationship with Kenya, “which has long been the UK’s defence partner of choice in East Africa”.
The MOD is “addressing concerns raised by Kenyan authorities and communities, focusing on legal accountability, ethical standards, environmental stewardship, economic benefit and social responsibility,” the spokesperson said.
Regarding road traffic incidents, the spokesperson said BATUK “cooperates fully with the local authorities and Kenyan Police”, that all such incidents are “investigated thoroughly” and that “where claims are made, BATUK submits to the jurisdiction of the Kenyan courts”.
When asked what progress the MOD had made on the concerns raised by the committee, and whether it was investigating any of the specific cases, it referred Al Jazeera to the written statement it submitted to the inquiry, which said it was “not aware of any evidence to support any allegation of collusion with security forces to suppress or dismiss complaints, or intimidate, bribe or coerce victims into silence”, and that any such evidence “would be taken extremely seriously and investigated accordingly”.
For Awino Okech, professor of feminist and security studies at SOAS University of London, the parliamentary report points beyond individual abuses. “This is no longer a case of a few bad apples but reckoning with what many will interpret as accepted militarised institutional culture,” she tells Al Jazeera.
“The fundamental question the British government is being asked to reflect on is their responsibility when there is a documented pattern of malbehaviour by their employees in a foreign country.”
Okech says the pattern cannot be separated from race. “We cannot ignore the racialised element. In this case, it is visible when crimes committed in Kenya are taken less seriously.”
