Operation Anvil (Mau Mau Uprising) Many Kikuyu were sympathetic to the Mau Mau cause and provided the insurgents with supplies. They also housed them, thereby facilitating attacks in the city and the neighboring Kiambu District. In June General George Erskine was dispatched to Kenya to assume control over British forces. He immediately began instituting reforms and organised a series of attacks against the Mau Mau. In January 1954 the British captured rebel leader Waruhiu Itote, who gave them critical information about Mau Mau deployments and strategy under interrogation. Two months later the colonial command structure was overhauled, increasing decision-making efficiency and granting Erskine greater influence
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