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Ian Henderson GM & Bar, CBE

Discussion in 'Roll of Honor & Memories - All Other Conflicts' started by GRW, Apr 22, 2013.

  1. GRW

    GRW Pillboxologist WW2|ORG Editor

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    "Ian Henderson, who has died aged 86, was a British colonial policeman who played a major role in subduing the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya and later served as security adviser to the al-Khalifa ruling family in Bahrain.
    Towards the end of his life, however, Henderson had to fight allegations that he had participated in torture in Bahrain, and found himself buffeted by the vagaries of postcolonial revisionism regarding his role in Kenya.


    In 1954 Henderson was awarded the George Medal, later with a Bar, for his role in suppressing the Mau Mau uprising. Installed by the British government as head of security in Bahrain in 1966, when the country was a British protectorate, he stayed on after Independence and held the post for more than 30 years. In 1984 he was appointed CBE.


    As Britain’s colonial record has in recent years come under increasingly critical scrutiny, Henderson found himself in the firing line over allegations by human rights campaigners that he had presided over, and participated in, gross maltreatment of Bahraini prisoners, some of whom died in custody.


    One prisoner, Hashem Redha, a pro-democracy activist, claimed that he was personally assaulted by Henderson: “He tortured me one time. He kicked me and shook me two times. He said, 'If you like to be hit, we can hit you more than that.’”


    Investigations into the allegations by Scotland Yard were dropped in 2001 owing to a lack of cooperation from the Bahraini authorities. But British parliamentarians, including Lord Avebury, George Galloway and Jeremy Corbyn, continued to call for Henderson to face prosecution — Galloway labelling him “Britain’s Klaus Barbie” and suggesting that he had “learned the black arts fixing electrodes to the genitals of the Mau Mau in Kenya”.


    Henderson dismissed stories of torture as “totally untrue” and challenged investigators to bring any evidence to the appropriate authorities. Notwithstanding the campaign to have him arrested, to many surviving old Kenya hands he remains a hero.
    Ian Stuart McWalter Henderson was born in Aberdeenshire in 1927 but grew up in Kenya, where his father, Jock, had been sent by a firm of Scottish seed merchants before the First World War. Jock Henderson stayed on and became a farmer near the Kikuyu township of Nyeri, near the Aberdare Mountains. As there were no white playmates nearby, Ian grew up among the Kikuyu, becoming fluent in their language and learning the skills of tracking and bushcraft.
    At Prince of Wales School, Nairobi, he was good at sport and became a lance-corporal in the school cadet corps. After leaving school in 1945 he joined the Kenyan police."
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10011292/Ian-Henderson.html
     
  2. urqh

    urqh Tea drinking surrender monkey

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    Difficult one this...He was obviously old school...doing what he thought his country wanted of him...This though through history has never excused the guilty of any nation including our own..However I just don't know his involvement in Bahrain...Lets face it...He differs from the last Brit sent out to Bahrain doing same job recently... The Imbecile and unhonourable Yates, or knacker of the yard...Compare them both. Which history has to...different times and morals...We cannot take today's morals and ideas and place them in yesterdays actions...This we have argued here in the forums on many subjects...however this then lets some off the hook...
    There is however no excuse for today's folk suck as Yates with today's knowledge and morals to do the same...Both men can be compared...Only one comes out with any semblance of honour.
     

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