Kenyan police stated Friday that they’d arrested a suspect within the killing of an LGBTQ rights campaigner whose physique was found stuffed in a metallic trunk, a grisly crime that has sparked nationwide outrage.

Edwin Chiloba, a 25-year-old dressmaker and mannequin, was discovered lifeless by the roadside earlier this week about 40 kilometres (25 miles) exterior the Rift Valley city of Eldoret, media studies stated.

“We have a suspect in custody and we’re investigating his function on this homicide,” said Peter Kimulwo, head of investigations at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) office in Eldoret.

“We are holding him as a prime suspect because there are leads pointing to him and others, but all these are subject to conclusive investigations,” he informed reporters.

Kimulwo stated the suspect was believed to have been a longtime good friend of the sufferer, including that police have been additionally searching for folks seen loading a metallic container right into a automotive at Chiloba’s house.

“He died a painful demise,” an unidentified police officer based in Eldoret told the media. “They must have tortured him and then gouged out his eye. It appears he was strangled.”

The Kenya Human Rights Commission urged police “to conduct swift investigations and make sure the killers are apprehended and prosecuted”.

“It is truly worrisome that we continue to witness escalation in violence targeting LGBTQ+ Kenyans,” it stated in a press release.

“Every day, the human rights of LGBTQ+ individuals are being violated with little consequence for perpetrators.”

Members of the LGBTQ community often face harassment and physical attacks in the predominantly conservative Christian nation.

Homosexuality is taboo in Kenya and across much of Africa, and gays often face discrimination or persecution.

Attempts to overturn British colonial-era laws banning homosexuality in Kenya have proven unsuccessful, and gay sex remains a crime with penalties that include imprisonment of up to 14 years.

“Our sincere condolences to the family and friends of prominent Kenyan LGBTQI+ community member Edwin Chiloba,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price stated on Twitter.

“We name for full accountability for his demise.”

The Kenya LGBTQ Feminist Forum in western Kenya, where Chiloba lived, said he had used “fashion to deconstruct gender and advocate for the rights of the marginalised group”.

“We need to know as a neighborhood, as Kenyans, what occurred to Edwin, why he was murdered and who dropped his physique on the scene,” the group’s programmes director Becky Mududa said.

Chiloba’s death comes after another LGBTQ activist was found murdered in April last year.

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