Cholmondeley trial begins in Nairobi

The trial of Tom Cholmondeley (pictured), 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 killed the poacher, Robert Njoya, while trying to shoot dogs that were bearing down on himself and a friend. He changed his story when detectives charged him with murder. And it doesn’t help that he has "previous". A year earlier he was charged with killing a wildlife ranger, and when this case was discreetly dropped on the instruction of Kenya's Attorney-General it caused uproar.

But Cholmondeley, the great-grandson of the third Baron Delamere, who was one of Kenya's most famous white settlers and the founder of the Happy Valley set, says he's optimistic about the trial. And his supporters are convinced that the judge will have no other option than to find him innocent of murder. However, there is a fear that a second acquittal could prompt fresh unrest in a country where divisions over land and money were exposed during weeks of political and tribal violence earlier this year.