_WORLD WATCH______________________________
______________________KENYA____________________
Policeman charged in missionary’s death
Suicide theory rejected in priest’s case
A Kenyan magistrate has ordered that a policeman should stand trial in the death of a Catholic missionary in 1997.
Francis Kimanzi Mbaya will be tried for the murder of Larry Timmons, a Franciscan lay missionary, who was shot on January 22, 1997. Magistrate Gladys Ndeda said Mbaya acted recklessly when he shot Timmons, even after he had lain down and pleaded with him to stop shooting. Mbaya was investigating a robbery.
“Mr. Mbaya had a chance to identify people at the scene which was well-lit. He took no precautions, he did not challenge the robbers to surrender before he opened fire,” Ndeda said. She also ordered investigations into robberies at two Catholic parishes two days before Timmons was killed. Ndeda criticized the local police force for failing to investigate the shooting and releasing suspects in the burglaries following the killing without following proper procedures.
Just days after the magistrate announced her ruling, the chairman of the Kenyan bishops conference joined a US Senator in rejecting the official explanation offered by government investigators in the death of another missionary. Authorities have suggested that Father John Kaiser killed himself in August, and American investigators sent to Kenya by the FBI (because Father Kaiser was a US citizen) have lent some support to that hypothesis. But Bishop John Njue, chairman of the Kenyan episcopal conference, said: “The theory of suicide is too cheap for anyone to buy and we cannot accept it.”
Father Kaiser was found dead on the Naivasha-Nairobi road, with a shotgun wound to the back of his head. His shotgun was by his side and his pickup truck had been abandoned in a ditch, nearby. A coroner’s report found that the priest had been killed by a gunshot “fired from a distance.”
Sen. Paul Wellstone, who represents Father Kaiser’s home state of Minnesota, said he was “highly skeptical” of the suicide theory. “Those closest to Father Kaiser and his work in Kenya have strongly rejected the suicide explanation,” he said. He was speaking only hours before the US Congress was due to receive an interim report from the State Department on the priest’s death.
Friends and relatives have reported that Father Kaiser had repeatedly received death threats in the weeks before his death. Father 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. In recent years, he also helped teenage girls pursue private rape cases against a leader of the Kenyan ruling party, Julius Sunkuli.
Bishop Njue said the Church had always feared a cover-up in the investigations and that the government was not committed to an impartial investigation. “That is why we have insisted that until we are told who was involved in his killing, we have no other alternative but to continue pressuring the government to carry out genuine investigations. It has a responsibility to protect its citizens and residents,” Bishop Njue said.
Back to Catholic World Report February 2001 Table of Contents