Nairobi - The Kenyan government is to lift a colonial-era ban on the Mau Mau, a group which killed a small number of European settlers in the 1950s.
Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi said the notice declaring the Mau Mau "an illegal and dangerous" organisation in 1950 should have been lifted after independence.
"The society is not dangerous to us because the freedom fighters attained what they wanted," Murungi told a group of Mau Mau veterans who petitioned his office.
"Our instructions are that the legal notice be revoked."
Removing the ban is among several long-standing demands of veterans of the Mau Mau uprising against the British in which 32 settlers were killed.
They were not met by the governments of Jomo Kenyatta or Daniel arap Moi but have found a sympathetic ear in the government of President Mwai Kibaki who was elected last December.
Mau Mau, made up of mostly illiterate peasants, was formed in the late 1940s to protest against the seizure of land for white settlers and to push for freedom from colonial rule.
They took up arms in the early 1950s and the colonial government responded by declaring a state of emergency that gave the authorities sweeping powers of arrest and detention.
The ban, declared in 1950, described the Mau Mau as "a society dangerous to the good government of the colony".
Mau Mau killed about 80 Europeans before the four-year uprising was quelled. The authorities and white vigilantes killed some 11 000 rebels or suspected rebels and imprisoned 80 000 sympathisers.
The insurrection - and the outcry over the heavy-handed response - helped bring an end to British rule in Kenya in 1963. Yet, after independence, the Mau Mau were shut out of power and the ban on the organisation remained on the statute books.
"We feel ashamed to see, 40 years down the road, that we are still ruled by colonial laws," the justice minister told the veterans. "We as your children cannot allow this."
Murungi did not specify a revocation date.
Some surviving Mau Mau and other detainees are taking legal action in an attempt to get compensation from Britain for their treatment. -
Sapa-DPA