ALLEGED MURDER OF AFRICAN

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27210, 30 November 1953, Page 11

ALLEGED MURDER OF AFRICAN

Officer Found Not Guilty NAIROBI, November 27. Captain Gerald Selby Lewis Griffiths was found not guilty by an Army court-martial today on a charge of murdering an African forestry worker with a Bren gun burst. The court-martial took more than an hour to reach its verdict The accused, who is 43, was a company commander in the King’s African Rifles. During the court-martial, which began on November 25. it was alleged that the accused told a company sergeant-major he could “shoot anybody he liked, provided they were black.”

He was charged with the murder of an African named Ndegwa on the Nyeri-Nweiga road on June 11 this year. The prosecution said that after a section of African soldiers commanded by Sergeant-Major Llewellyn had .stopped three Africans, the accused, then a major, drove up in a jeep and demanded to know why he had not killed them.

After examining the three men’s passes, the prosecution said, he ordered two of them to walk forward, then “discharged a burst into their backs and practically blew out their stomachs.”

The accused denied the statements attributed to him by Sergeant-Major Llewellyn, and told the court-martial he shot the Africans when they headed towards cover at a shambling trot. A senior chief. Muhoya, called as a defence witness, said the two Africans who were shot were not loyal. Both had attended a Mau Mau oath ceresnooy. ■ ’