Venezuelan envoy dead in Kenya
July 27, 2012
The acting head of Venezuela's embassy in Kenya was found murdered at her official residence in Nairobi, local police said on Friday.
The charge d'affaires and acting ambassador, Olga Fonseca Jimenez, was strangled to death, according to police. The scene of the crime was the envoy's heavily secured white mansion in the upmarket Runda neighborhood, which is surrounded by an electric fence.
"We received reports that she was found dead in the house on her bed. What we have seen is that she has been strangled," Anthony Kibuchi, Nairobi area police commander, said to reporters.
The Venezuelan foreign ministry made no immediate comment on the incident.
Plunged into a scandal
The envoy arrived into the thick of a scandal in the Venezuelan ministry on July 15. Fonseca was summoned to replace Carrillo-Silva, who had fled the country after three male workers at his embassy accused him of sexual harassment, according to Ngure Mbugua, a lawyer representing those individuals.
Mbugua said that he called on Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to press the Venezuelan government to lift the diplomat's immunity from prosecution so that he could be arrested and tried, either in Kenya or in Venezuela.
But, according to Mbugua, Carrillo-Silva fled before legal processes against him were completed.
sej/tm (Reuters, AP)