—

Kenyatta s wife hears news

Dei ne Te in)

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Is a
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At their home in Surrey, England, Jomo Kenyatta’s wife and
"9 son were overjoyed to hear that D. N. Pritt, QC, had won
Ppeal to Kenya Supreme Court. However, Kenyatta and five
i fr Kenya African Union leaders must now face a new trial
“i an atmosphere of hysteria such as led to their conviction on
~™ped up charges of directing the Mau Mav.

Sanda manoeuvre.”

Us gistoy added that for the
ene © approach the Soviet gov-
‘ nt without first consulting
lig “en Democratic Repub-

: Nowads behavior which would
latig 8Ys offend even the popu-
Ger, 2 Colony, let alone the

“Mo h People.” ;

both aie, Newspapers published

Note otov’s reply and the US.

taining the offer.
from tov said that it was obvious
S0ven,, U-S. note that the U.S.
eq ‘ €nt is incorrectly inform-
‘ eg the situation in Eastern
(ry Ns
_ You a Cannot be otherwise, since
Paster ate that information on
NUch go. <tmany was relayed from
COmmutces as the U.S.. High
Sloner and Dr, Adenauer.”

US. offer of food
Propaganda trick’
declares Molotov

ise oViet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov.has denounced President
Propa Ower’s proposal to send surplus food to Eastern Germany as “a

MOSCOW

true» 8S, he said, “a move which has nothing in common with the
interests of the German people.”

It is they, Molotov declared,
who bear the chief responsibility
for the violation of public order
in the eastern parts of Berlin.

“If on June 17 they had not
organized the dispatch of whole
groups of paid agents and crim-
inal elements from the U.S. sec-
tor of Berlin to set fire to food
and other shops, no disturbances
would have occurred.”

The Soviet government had al-
ready rendered aid to the German
population: by: sending foodstuffs
at an earlier date.

“The Soviet government con-
tinues to be prepared to render, if
requested, all necessary aid in the
way of foodstuffs and other ways
to the population of the German
Democratic Republic.”

Court quashes sentences of
Kenya African Union leaders;
‘shoot-on-sight methods hit

KITALE, Kenya

Sentences of seven years hard
labor imposed last April on Jomo
Kenyatta and five other Kenya
African Union leaders alleged to
have managed or helped to man-
age Mau Mau were quashed last
week by the Kenya Supreme Court.

The court, sitting here, upheld
the submission of D. N. Pritt, QC,
chief defense counsel, that Rans-
ley Thacker, the magistrate at the
four-month trial, had no jurisdic-
tion to try the charges.

The court ordered the retrial of
all six Africans — Jomo Kenyatta,
Fred Kubai, Richard Achieng, On-
eka Bildad Gaggia, Paul Ngei and
Kunga Karumba.

It made no order for their cus-
tody, but they are still detained

by police under the Kenya Emer-
gency Regulations.

Pritt unsuccessfully urged the
court not to order a retrial, which
would be terribly vexatious and
oppressive” to his clients.

The government had had “a
trial trip — a rehearsal which
will enable them to rebuild their
case,” and the African leaders
had exhausted their resources.

In making the appeal, Pritt had
ocntended that Ransley Thacker
had no authority to try the case
at Kapenguria, in the Rift Valley
Province, since he was magistrate
for the Northern Province only.

This was the contention upheld
by the Supreme Court.

Pritt also challenged Thacker’s
conduct of the -hearings, saying
that he had believed everything
submitted by the prosecution and
rejected all defense submissions.

He contended that the defense
was kept in the dark about the
case it would have to answer, al-
though it applied for particulars
of the charges. :

The prosecution case, said Pritt,
was not a case upon which it
would be safe to convict any of
the accused. There was no -reli-
able case for the prosecution
which could be accepted.

The African leaders were arres-
ted last October a few hours after
a State of Emergency had been
declared in Kenya.

Jomo Kenyatta was president of
the 100,000-strong Kenya African
Union; Fred Kukai is .a leading
figure in the Kenya Transport
Workers’ Union.

The others were all leaders of
the Kenya African Union.

D. N. PRITT, QC
His submission was upheld

Petition

signed

in blood

LONDON

Fenner Brockway, Labor MP for
Eton and Slough, entered the
House of Commons on Tuesday
last week carrying sheets of fools-
cap paper covered with smudges
of red-brown blood.

Each smudge was the signature
of a Kenya African who cannot
write his name. Addresses were
written beside the smudges. Later
Brockway presented ‘a petition
signed by 158,642 citizens of Ken-
ya and 16,395 people in Britain.

About 100,000 of the signatories
were drawn from the Kikuyu tribe.

Their petition shows that a
grievous wrong has been suffered
by the people because of the alien-
ation of 16,700 square miles of
their most fertile land and the
consequent overcrowding of the
reserve.

This has had disastrous effects
on the wellbeing of the people.

They demand that Africans shall
have the right to occupy and own
land in any part of Kenya.

By MALCOLM MacEWEN

LONDON

Horrified protests against the
Churchill government’s shoot-on-
sight methods in Kenya followed
Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttle-
ton’s admission in the House of
Commons last week that five Afri-
cans are being killed for every one
arrested.

In little more than three months
—between March 27 and July 6—
1,062 Africans were killed by Brit-
ish security forces, 349 were be-
lieved wounded, and 223 were
taken prisoner.

Lyttleton, after giving these
facts, was accused by Labor MPs
of carrying ruthlessness to ex-
tremes, and of waging an “Indian
war of extermination.”

While refusing point blank to
appoint a commission of inquiry
into these outrages, he was utterly
unable to account for the very
high proportion of killed to wound-
ed and prisoners.

Neither could he prove that the
killed were in reality “terrorists”
as he alleged.

From the time the “emergency”
began up to July 6, 1,300 Africans
have been killed, 514 believed
wounded and 2,673 taken prisoner,
Mr. Lyttleton said.

No less than 201 of those killed
died in “Operation Buttercup,” de-
scribed by General Sir George Er-

‘| skine, commander in chief, in East

Africa, as the biggest operation
in the “emergency.”

But Erskine saw no end to the
killings. Instead, he called for
the formation of a much larger
police force than in the past and
for_more mobile military patrols
which could move about the coun-
try quickly. ee

And he described for a press
conference in Nairobi how, in or-
der to quicken up the punishment
of Africans, troops and police are
now taking magistrates about with
them’ to carry out trials on the
spot.

He told of the operation carried
out recently by armored cars and
gunners of 156 Heavy. Anti-Air-
craft Battery, working as a mobile
column, in the Embu district, on
the slopes of Mount Kenya.

This is not an area inhabited
by Kikuyu. The need to send so
big a force there shows that
African opposition to the terror
now exists throughout the col-
ony. $

The area had previously hardly
been touched by troops and police,
General Erskine said, and went on
to compare the Africans in it with
muck. res
“The operation was a case of
lifting up the carpet and looking
at the muck underneath, with
troops lifting the carpet and
‘loyal’ Kikuyu looking at the
muck.”

New towns in
Czechoslovakia

under the country’s first Five Year
§ streets a new town is coming into

; and sports centres. _

_ town — the February Victory set-

Kladno, a mining and foundry
centre, is one of the Czechoslovak
towns which is being transformed

Plan. Where formerly workers
lived in old houses on ill-pianned

being, complete with modern
schools and nurseries, cultural

The first section of the new

tlement at Kladno-Rozdelov (shown
at left) — is almost completed and
between eight and nine thousand
miners’ and foundry. workers’ fam-
ilies are already living in the new
apartment buildings.

‘i — — “i hcg eat lind uclibc alae el ie ieee A ani tiie os lneaieei ld le ill iil id habia inn i aalaaiedll