Cholmondeley trial begins in Nairobi

The trial of Tom Cholmondeley, the Kenyan landowner accused of shooting dead a poacher on his family’s 58,000-acre estate, begins in Nairobi today. For two years, Cholmondeley, 40, has been languishing in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, where conditions, he claims in an interview in today's Times, are pretty grim. "The reason I don't dwell on the horror of this place is that it’s almost a caricature. It is so horrific," he said. All of this, some might say, is grist to the mill: as The First Post reported two weeks ago, Cholmondeley has been hawking a memoir of his experiences to a number of London publishers, none of whom have taken up his offer because of the sensitivity surrounding the case. Their caution is justified: his innocence is far from clear cut. Cholmondeley initially told police that he had accidentally... [read full story]