Sen. Paul Wellstone grilled a team of FBI agents for more than an hour Thursday about their report on the death of the Rev. John Kaiser in Kenya.
Afterward, Wellstone said he remained convinced the Minnesota priest was murdered and did not commit suicide, as the FBI concluded in its report. The FBI conceded several points that Wellstone said seemed to make their conclusion shakier.
``I don't think the substantive threats were taken into account,'' Wellstone said. ``It seemed to me Father Kaiser had real reasons to believe the substantive threats to his life.''
Kaiser's body was found near his pickup truck on a highway north of Nairobi on Aug. 24. He was lying in the ditch, the back of his head blown off.
The FBI said there were no other footprints around the body and truck except Kaiser's, eliminating murder as the possibility. The FBI report states, however, that a group of people discovered the body before police arrived and a videotape of the crime scene showed nuns, priests, soldiers, journalists and others walking up to and around the truck.
Wellstone's aide, Charlotte Oldham-Moore, who was at the briefing, said the agents acknowledged people walked all over the crime scene, and that while the Kenyans did an acceptable job of protecting the area, it wouldn't hold up before a U.S. jury. Still, the FBI would not be moved from its conclusion.
``They were willing to say they could see how others would have doubts,'' Wellstone said.
Wellstone told the agents that the Kenyan government of President Daniel arap Moi uses brutality and terror, especially against people who challenge the government. Kaiser had been outspoken against the government and probably was murdered for his efforts, Wellstone said. Oldham-Moore said the FBI agents agreed and gave the senator an example.
A local man went to check on one of the girls who had accused a member of Kenya's parliament, Julius Sunkuli, of having raped her when she was about 14 years old. Kaiser had been trying to bring Sunkuli to justice. After he checked on the girl, police arrested the man, held him for three days and shoved a broom stick down his throat. When the FBI agents found out, they called their Kenyan counterparts and demanded the man be released, Oldham-Moore said.
Sunkuli admitted to the FBI agents that he had sex with the two girls, whose case Kaiser was championing, the senator said.
After the meeting, Thomas Carey, assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, refused to answer a reporter's questions beyond saying ``we stand by our report. And I'm not going to make any further comments.''
A member of Kenya's parliament, Paul Muite, who has opposed Moi for years, gave the names of two Kenyan police officers to the Pioneer Press and to Wellstone's office. According to Muite's sources, those two men committed the murder. The FBI did not talk to Muite until late in the investigation, but concluded it probably was not a credible report, Oldham-Moore said.
Finally, the FBI report concluded that in order to shoot himself with his shotgun at a point just below and behind his right ear, Kaiser probably put the butt of the gun on the ground and bent over the barrel. Oldham-Moore said the FBI did not find any indentation in the ground that the gun's recoil might be expected to create.
Wellstone said he plans to do two things. First, he will talk to Secretary of State Colin Powell and others at the State Department about Kaiser's death and how the U.S. government should pressure the Kenyan government on behalf of people fighting for human rights.
Second, he will ask Kaiser's family in Minnesota and California about whether to press Attorney General John Ashcroft for a review of the FBI report.