U.S. sends FBI agents to help probe priest's death

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- The United States has taken the unusual step of dispatching three FBI agents to assist with the Kenyan investigation into the death of an outspoken American priest, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

The three arrived in the East African nation late Sunday following a request to the United States from the Kenyan attorney general, said Tom Hart, U.S. Embassy spokesman.

"It's unusual, but we felt that with such a high-profile case that has attracted a lot of attention in the U.S. and Kenya ... we should offer any appropriate assistance," Hart told The Associated Press.

The body of Rev. John Kaiser, a native of Minnesota who had worked in Kenya for 36 years, was found early Thursday along a highway near Naivasha, 50 miles northwest of Nairobi. He had been shot in the back of the head.

Kaiser, 67, was a vocal critic of Kenya's human rights record. Kenyan human rights activists immediately called his death a political assassination.

Local media reports Sunday said documents found on his body linked two unidentified Kenyan cabinet ministers to violent tribal clashes. Kaiser intended to hand the documents over to a government commission looking into the clashes, which took place in Rift Valley Province between 1992 and 1997, the reports said.

Local newspapers, quoting investigators at the scene, said the killers at first tried to make Kaiser's death appear to be an auto accident. Failing that, the body was then positioned to make it look like a suicide. Kenya police spokesman Peter Kimanthi said the death was being treated as homicide.