Calling for an official inquiry into the mass killing during anti-insurgency operations in 1948, lawyers for relatives of the victims disclosed for the first time the soldiers' accounts given during police interviews.
The statements were taken in 1970, when the then Labour government ordered an investigation into the deaths.
However, the probe was abruptly cancelled in June 1970 after the Conservatives won the general election.
Relatives of those killed in Batang Kali, who have twice petitioned the Queen, have challenged the government's continued refusal to hold an inquiry into the incident.
Mr Michael Fordham QC, counsel for the Malaysian relatives, told the court yesterday that six of the eight soldiers interviewed under caution by detectives corroborated accounts that the villagers had been unlawfully killed.
The mass killings, involving a platoon of Scots Guards, occurred on Dec 12, 1948, while British troops were conducting military operations against communist insurgents during the Malayan emergency.
Soldiers rounded up men at Sungai Rimoh in Batang Kali, a town located in Selangor, and shot dead 24 of them, then burned their homes.
The official British account was that the victims were attempting to escape when they were shot.
Judicial review of the decision will continue today.
ORIGINAL SOURCE: http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC120509-0000050/Batang-Kali-massacre--British-soldiers-admitted-unlawful-killings
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