Revealed: Secrets of Dedan Kimathi files

Chief Justice Willy Mutunga (right) hands over documents relating to the trial against the death sentence of the late freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi from the United Kingdom to Mrs Mukami Kimathi on Thursday, March 17 2016.The files relate to the 1956 trial and conviction in Nyeri and later the appeal against the death sentence from the Senate House Library of the University of London. [PHOTO DAVID NJAAGA/STANDARD]

NAIROBI: At exactly 6am on February 18, 1957, Dr K E Robertson made one of the most important pronouncements in his career. He certified that one of the deadliest men in Kenya then, Dedan Kimathi, was dead. In a form he would file later, he neatly penned that the cause of death was hanging, explaining that the death had been instantaneous.

While signing the execution warrant, the Kenya Colony Governor Sir Evelyn gave the discretion to the prisons authorities to either bury or cremate his body.