Family of American killed in Kenya wants separate probe

NAIROBI (AP) — The family of an American investor of Somali origin whose body was found with torture wounds days after he went missing in Nairobi wants Kenya's director of public prosecutions to run a separate investigation from one being done by police.

In a letter sent through their lawyer, relatives of Bashir Mohamed Mohamud, 36, question the behavior of police after Mohamud disappeared in an apparent abduction and call for a separate investigation to run concurrently with that of the police.

The family questioned the time it took police to ask them to positively identify Mohamud when he had been identified days before they were notified. In the letter delivered to the DPP’s office earlier this week, they asked why the shell of Mohamud's burned Range Rover was taken away within minutes after the vehicle was linked to him.

The family delivered the letter even as local media published stories quoting unnamed sources without evidence insinuating that Mohamud was funding extremism through money transfers made by his construction company Infinity Development Limited.

Human rights defenders in Kenya have previously illustrated how police linked slaying victims to extremism or robberies to explain unsolved killings.

Wilfred Ollal, the coordinator of a network of community-based social justice centers in Kenya, said people disappear every week before their bodies are found in the countryside, while others are never found.

The killings and forced disappearances are rampant in low-income areas of the capital, but nobody is immune, he said.

“Our interventions save some, but the bodies of others are found in rivers," Ollal said Saturday.

Police, without producing any evidence, attempt to explain such killings on social media pages associated with the force by saying the...