The Times is reporting that the British tortured Barack Obama’s grandfather during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya.

Hussein Onyango Obama, Mr Obama’s paternal grandfather, became involved in the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after the war. He was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a high-security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.

Onyango served with the British Army in Burma during the Second World War and, like many army veterans, he returned to Africa hoping to win greater freedoms from colonial rule. Although a member of the Luo tribe from western Kenya, he sympathised with the Kikuyu Central Association, the organisation leading an independence movement that would evolve into the bloody uprising known as the Mau Mau rebellion.

In his book, Obama said that his grandfather was held for only 6 months then released after being found innocent. However, Obama’s step-grandmother has a different version:

“His job as cook to a British army officer made him a useful informer for the secret oathing movement which would later form the Mau Mau rebellion,” she said. The Mau Mau used oaths as part of their initiation ceremony.

According to Mrs Onyango, her husband was arrested by two soldiers, and taken to Kamiti prison, the national maximum-security prison outside Nairobi.

“This was like a death camp because some detainees died while being tortured,” Mrs Onyango said. “We were not allowed to see him, not even taking him food.” She said her husband was told that he would be killed or maimed if he refused to reveal what he knew of the insurgency, and was beaten repeatedly until he promised “never to rejoin any groupings opposed to the white man’s rule”. Even after he had confessed, and renounced the insurgency, the physical abuse allegedly continued.

Whatever the charges were against Obama’s grandfather, the fact his grandfather was imprisoned and tortured may very well influence the means Obama authorizes for future terrorist interrogations. Obama has already said he will shut down Guantanamo. No one should expect that he would extract any revenge from the British for his grandfather, however. Yet he is likely to view international agreements on human rights with a much more favorable eye than George Bush ever did.