Continuation of Scotish Widow:

Continuation of Scotish Widow: British gem expert killed by Kenyan mob after mining row. From The Times August 12, 2009. Tristan McConnell. A well-known Scottish gem expert has been murdered in Kenya by a mob carrying knives, clubs, spears, bows and arrows in what police believe was a dispute over mining rights. A mob of up to 30 men set upon Campbell Bridges, 71, his son Bruce and four Kenyan employees close to Tsavo national park, a popular safari park famous for its lions. “My men were cut to ribbons and I took a panga [machete] to the neck,” a shaken Bruce Campbell toldThe Times. “It was an ambush.” Bruce blamed the attack on artisanal miners who he said were illegally digging for gems on the family’s 600-hectare concession. The Campbells, who have had the concession since 1971, have been in dispute with the unlicensed miners for three years and say they have received numerous death threats, most recently just two weeks ago. Speaking in Nairobi where he had come with his father’s body Bruce recounted the attack. “As we drove towards our mining camp we found huge thorn trees blocking the road. Eight men with machetes, spears, clubs, knives, bows and arrows appeared shouting ‘We’re going to kill you all!’ Then more people came down the mountain like ants, 20 or 30 of them.” Mr Campbell was set upon by two men and was stabbed in the side with a knife. “I saw him fall,” said Bruce, his voice wavering with emotion. The 6 foot three inches tall 30-year old fought his way to his father’s side, swinging a club that he kept in the car. “At the same time, two of my security guards who were with us were gashed with pangas and beaten with clubs,” he added. Bruce said that he and his workers beat back the attackers and loaded his father’s body into the pick-up truck before racing off down the dirt road. Mr Campbell was pronounced dead at a clinic in Voi. He blamed local police officers for ignoring their repeated requests for help and local government officials for backing the illegal miners. “They say we’re foreigners and the gems don’t belong to us,” he said. Kenya has a history of attacks on white landowners who often control large properties, to the chagrin of poor locals. Local police commander, John Ole Shampiro, said, “We believe, according to our investigations, that his death was a result of a mining dispute involving the deceased and the locals.” A Foreign Office spokesman in Nairobi confirmed that a British national had died from injuries sustained during an attack yesterday and that a police investigation had been launched. Mr Bridges’ wife, Judith, is a US citizen and his two children, Bruce and Laura, have dual nationalities. The spokesman said that British consular officials were working closely with their American counterparts to assist the family. Mr Campbell made his name as a gemologist with his 1960s discovery of Tsavorite, a bright green gemstone found along the Kenya-Tanzania border. He was also instrumental in the discovery and introduction to the international market of a local blue gemstone known as Tanzanite. Today, his son Bruce called him the father of East African gemstone mining. In his tales of Tsavorite’s discovery deep in the African bush Mr Campbell, a thickly bearded adventurer, would recount setting a pet python to guard the gems, having to share his tree house home with a pair of wandering leopards and dodging rhinos while digging new mines. “When we were away from the tree-house for any length of time, one of the two leopards that inhabited the range would drag its kill (usually a lesser kudu) up the tree and eat it on my bed,” wrote Mr Campbell. “For a short while after our return he would express his displeasure by walking around the tree at night, growling and clawing at the bark.” He also had to watch out for the prides of marauding lions for which Tsavo is famous. During the 19th century building of the colonial-era railway from Mombassa to Nairobi, two maneless male lions dubbed the ‘Tsavo maneaters’ killed dozens of workers before being hunted down. They were stuffed and put on display in a Chicago museum. In 1973, his dogged perseverance paid off when jeweller, Tiffany & Co, designated the green gem Tsavorite after the national park in which it was found. “He was a king for us,” said Pavel Sokolov, of the International Colored Gemstone Association, as the plaudits came into gem-lovers' websites around the world. “He was a legend among gemmologists and geologists. The jewellery market is not so open, but he was open with everybody.”