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Kenya
Priest’s murder probed
Priest doubts FBI can solve crime
A Kenyan priest has expressed doubt that the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) will be able to conduct an independent, professional investigation into the murder of US missionary Father John Kaiser.
Father Kaiser, a Mill Hill missionary who had served in Kenya for 36 years, was murdered on August 23 after telling colleagues he feared for his life. A human-rights activist, Father Kaiser had been preparing a report that linked highly placed government officials with a series of ethnic clashes last year.
After his death, a team of FBI agents was flown into Kenya to assist in the investigation. In a letter to the US ambassador in Nairobi, Johnnie Carson, Father Gabriel Dolan of the Kitale diocese’s Justice and Peace Commission has vowed to resign from his ministry if the suspicions he holds against the Kenyan and the US governments are proven wrong. “Moreover, if the [Kenyan] government is not in any way involved in this murder, I will fold my collar and go back to Ireland [his home country] and tender my apology for having harbored suspicions,” he said in the letter.
Father Dolan alleged that the FBI team was composed of inexperienced personnel who were not prepared for such a serious task. He added his suspicion that even if the investigation does yield hard results, the US government may sacrifice the truth in order to protect its long-term economic and political interests in Kenya.
Preliminary reports indicated that the FBI agents, working jointly with Kenyan counterparts, were bent on compiling a report claiming Father Kaiser committed suicide “based on his rather erratic behavior several days before he met his death.” The suicide theory will sharply contradict an expert’s report at the scene of the crime, as well as the report of a pathologist who flatly stated that the priest’s death was a homicide.
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