Armed men abduct Kenyan editor, employer suspects government

An associate editor for one of Kenya 's largest news outlets, The Standard , was abducted by armed men overnight and then released near a dam far from the scene around nine hours later, his employer said on Wednesday.

Alex Kiprotich was taken from a car at around 9:20 p.m. on Tuesday on a road near the city of Nakuru.

"The circumstances of Mr Kiprotich's abduction remain deeply troubling, and we will continue to press for full accountability," the government-critical outlet said in a press release after his discovery.

Late on Tuesday the Standard Group's CEO Chaacha Mwita had also said that the "abduction bears all the hallmarks of a targeted attack on a journalist for doing his job."

The newspaper released a video overnight of what appeared to be dashcam footage from the car Kiprotich was traveling in when he was abducted.

A white vehicle without any markings apparent in the footage came to a stop in front of the car in an area where temporary barriers created a single-lane bottleneck on the Gilgil-Nakuru highway, and put on its hazard lights.

Four men in civilian clothes and obscuring their faces — some holding firearms and others carrying what appeared to be baseball bats — emerged and converged on the car, soon taking a man back to their vehicle and driving off.

On Wednesday, Standard Group said that Kiprotich had been located near a dam more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) southeast the scene of the abduction roughly nine hours earlier.