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Nearly three months after the murder of Sierra Leone's most prominent lesbian campaigner, and with a suspect in custody, police say the crime was motivated by avarice.

Fanny Ann Eddy, 30, founder of Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Association, was strangled in the group's Freetown offices during the night of September 29th, while she was working alone. Taken from the office were such items as a computer, cell phone, and generator.

At the end of November, police declared that a suspect had been arrested in the border town of Kambia, while trying to escape to neighboring Guinea.

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"Fanny Ann Eddy was killed at her Pademba Road office due to economic gain," police spokesman Kruchev Kargbo was quoted as saying in the November 30th Concord, a Freetown newspaper.

Reports-- on the BBC, CBS, and from Human Rights Watch-- that Eddy had additionally been raped, stabbed, and had her neck broken are false, says the International Lesbian and Gay Association, based on results of Eddy's post-mortem.

Eddy's murder was horrible enough as it was, and it's possible that her activism and the support she received from Western human rights groups were contributing factors-- either by ramping-up the viciousness of an ordinary burglary, or making SLLAGA's offices appear a rich target.

Eddy was one of the rare publicly gay figures in sub-Saharan Africa outside of southern Africa. She founded SLLAGA in 2002, the year that Sierra Leone's 11-year-old civil war ended.

In April 2004, Eddy travelled to Geneva to give testimony to the UN Commission on Human Rights. She spoke of gay Sierra Leoneans being thrown out of their homes and disowned by their families, harassed by police, and she argued that pressure on gay men to have heterosexual relations was abetting the spread of HIV.

"Many African leaders do not want to even acknowledge that we exist," she said. "But because of the denial of our existence, we live in constant fear: fear of the police and officials with the power to arrest and detain us simply because of our sexual orientation."

Sierra Leone's police and courts have a reputation for corruption and are swamped with cases resulting from atrocities committed during the civil war. There's no word when there may be a trial.

Author Profile:  Bill Andriette
Bill Andriette is features editor of The Guide
Email:	theguide@guidemag.com