Operation Anvil (Mau Mau Uprising) authorities. Within 48 hours the British had detained 206 known insurgents. In the following weeks over 50,000 Africans were detained and questioned. Nevetheless, numerous leading figures among the rebels managed to escape from Nairobi into the countryside. The operation ended on 26 May. Operation Anvil marked a turning-point in the British campaign against the Mau Mau. The action left the insurgents mostly isolated in the forested mountains of Nyandarwa and Kirinyaga without access to supplies and the assistance of passive supporters. It proved to be the most sophisticated undertaking of the Kenyan Emergency. In the following weeks Mau Mau activity
Mau Mau Uprising were "systematically abusing and torturing detainees in screening centres and detention camps". In April 2011, lawyers for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office continued to maintain that there was no such policy. As early as November 1952, however, military reports noted that "[t]he Army has been used for carrying out certain functions that properly belonged to the Police, eg. searching of huts and screening of Africans", and British soldiers arrested and transferred Mau Mau suspects to camps where they were beaten and tortured until they confessed. Bennett said that "the British Army retained ultimate operational control over all security forces throughout