Catholic World News News Feature

Government ministers behind priest's death, Kenyan politician charges August 16, 2005

A prominent Kenyan politician has testified that an American-born missionary priest who died mysteriously in 2000 was killed elsewhere, and his body left to be found near a highway outside Nairobi.

Paul Muite told an inquest that Father Anthony John Kaiser had been threatened because of his clashes with former President Daniel Arap Moi and two former ministers of his ruling cabinet, Nicholas Biwott and Julius Sunkuli. Muite said that he had met with Father Kaiser three weeks before the priest's death in August 2000, and the American missionary had told him that he had been advised to leave Kenya, and informed that a plot to kill him was afoot.

On August 24, the witness continued, Father Kaiser was lured from his mission by another Catholic priest, Father Emmanuel Ngugi, and led into a trap. He was then murdered, and his body dumped beside the Nakuru-Nairobi highway, where it was discovered in the morning. Police investigators have already testified although the priest died of a massive gunshot wound to the head, no spent cartridges were found near his body.

Shortly after the incident, Kenyan investigators-- assisted by American FBI agents-- concluded that Father Kaiser's death was a suicide. Under pressure from the Catholic hierarchy, the Kenyan government re-opened the investigation after the fall of President Moi's government.

Paul Muite told the investigating panel that he did not believe that Father Kaiser was mentally unstable, as a court-appointed psychiatrist had testified during the original investigation. Muite said that the priest's clash with the Moi government was very real. Father Kaiser had charged that President Moi and his cabinet ministers were using tribal conflicts as a pretext for seizing lands and enriching themselves.