Nobody knows precisely how many Kenyans were slaughtered, but the number may reach the hundreds of thousands. Some 1.5 million people were detained, many in internment camps. Mau Mau suspects were subjected, during interrogations, to electric shocks, cigarette burns, and appalling forms of sexual torture. This brutal campaign did not forestall the British withdrawal from Kenya, in 1963. Yet, back in London, the operation against the Mau Mau was celebrated as a great success.
