Kenyan Court: US Catholic Priest was Murdered

KENYA: Church Calls for Fresh Probe After Court Finds Fr Kaiser was Murdered NAIROBI, August 3, 2007 (CISA) -A Catholic missionary priest, Fr. Anthony John Kaiser whose body was recovered in Naivasha seven years ago, was murdered, a court in Nairobi ruled. Giving her ruling after a four-year public inquest in which 111 witnesses testified, Nairobi Chief Magistrate Maureen Odero said that despite claims that Fr. Kaiser was mentally unstable and committed suicide, no tangible evidence was tabled in court to back the claims. “This court has no hesitation concluding that based on the facts availed before it, Fr Kaiser met his death as a result of culpable homicide in the hands of a third party,” the magistrate said on Wednesday in a 72-page ruling. The packed courtroom included a Catholic bishop, several missionaries, Fr Kaiser’s family, friends and human rights activists.

The magistrate, however, said she could not - on the basis of evidence tabled before her in the inquest - point out with certainty who the priest’s killers were. “This court, therefore, recommends that fresh investigations be immediately instituted by the police in order to fill the blanks . . . in order to determine conclusively the identity of those who killed Fr Kaiser.” Reacting to the ruling, Bishop Peter Kairo of Nakuru Diocese, also the chair of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission (CJPC), said that the church was happy that the truth had finally come out. “But the government should still launch investigations so that the exact killers are known,” he told CISA.

Lawyer Mbuthi Gathenji for the Catholic Church said that the police should save face by launching immediate investigations into the death. The body of Fr Kaiser a Mill Hill Priest who had served Kenya for almost 40 years was found on the morning of August 24, 2000, at the Morendat junction on the Nakuru-Naivasha highway. His head was partly blown off with a shotgun, which lay nearby. Kenya's chief government pathologist and a pathologist from an independent human rights organization present at the autopsy thought Fr Kaiser was killed from a muzzle distance of about three feet. However, FBI experts, who did not examine Fr. Kaiser’s body, concluded that Kaiser had committed suicide on the basis of photographs and interviews with a few people.

Nairobi August 1st: A Kenyan court has rejected a US Federal Bureau of Investigation finding that an outspoken US-born Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. John Anthony Kaiser, who died in the country seven years ago, committed suicide. Instead, the court declared Kaiser had been murdered. "The suicide theory is replete with loopholes and missing links," said Nairobi magistrate Maureen Odero, while giving her ruling at an inquest she has presided over since 2003. "The theory raises more questions than answers. This court finds the FBI report seriously flawed, superficial and lopsided." An FBI spokesman in Washington declined to comment Wednesday night.

Kaiser—a 67 year-old native of Perham, Minn., who had been in Kenya for 35 years—was found dead on the side of a busy highway between the town of Naivasha and Nairobi, the capital, on Aug. 24, 2000. His shotgun was found by his side, and his pickup truck was 33 feet away in a ditch. At least three FBI agents reported in April 2001 that Kaiser suffered from depression and most likely shot himself in the head. But the 80-plus page document was not a formal crime report, and the FBI acknowledged that "this analysis is not a substitute for a thorough well-planned investigation and should not be considered all inclusive." Its conclusion was rejected by the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and Kaiser's colleagues, and calls grew for another probe. Police at the scene initially said they believed he was slain and that it was made to look like a suicide. "The court totally rejects the FBI report and in particular the court rejects the conclusion and findings therein indicating that Father Kaiser took his own life," said Odero. "Based on the evidence before this inquest, the court concludes that Father Kaiser met his death as result of culpable homicide." "It is a great job," said Mbuthi Gathenji, the lawyer representing Kaiser's family and order of the Mill Hill Missionaries. "Our aim was to vacate the suicide theory and we hope that investigations will now be done properly."

Kaiser was known for his crusading human rights work, and had accused some of Kenya's most powerful politicians of being responsible for political violence in 1991-92 that was carried out under the guise of tribal fighting. He also helped teenage girls pursue cases of rape against a former powerful Cabinet member. The inquest took four years to conclude from when it began in August 2003 because a month after it opened there was a purge of corrupt and inefficient judicial officers that saw a third of Kenya's magistrates lose their jobs, exacerbating problems such as understaffing and a huge backlog in Kenya's judiciary.
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