It was May, 2012. Inside a gloomy, oak panelled courtroom in the Royal Courts of Justice in London, a group of bewigged British and Malaysian lawyers confronted a legal team from the British Foreign and Commonwealth office in front of a panel of judges.
The problem for the Court was time. The killings may have been unlawful, Lord Neuberger concluded, but they occurred more than 10 years before the critical date when the right of petition to the Strasbourg court of human rights was recognised by the UK and created a duty to investigate.
The following day the British owner of the Sungei Remok Estate, Thomas Menzies, who had serious clout in the British estate-owners’ community and was dismayed by the loss of 24 workers, publicly stated that his men had a long record of good conduct. By December 24th the Straits Times was calling for a public enquiry.
At the end of January the British Communist MP Philip Piratin demanded that Arthur Creech-Jones, the colonial secretary, explain the actions of the Scots Guards.
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