KEY POINTS:
Kenyan police say they have now identified five suspects in the murder of New Zealand photojournalist Trent Keegan.
Keegan's badly beaten body was found on May 28 in Nairobi.
A police spokesman, Charles Owino, told a website for professional photographers, pdnonline.com, that police had recovered 15 items that were taken from Keegan, including his laptop and digital camera.
"It was a robbery with violence," Mr Owino said.
He declined to release the names of the suspects, and said the next step would be for them to be charged in court.
Robbery with violence is a capital offence in Kenya, but is very common in Nairobi.
Keegan arrived in Africa on March 25 after working as a photographer in Galway, Ireland and had been taking photographs in both Tanzania and Kenya.
But a friend of Keegan, Irish artist Dave Redmond, said the New Zealander was carrying expensive equipment with him when the two met at a bar the night he was murdered.
"We left the bar together and shook hands at 9.30pm while saying goodbye. He walked to the taxi and I heard him talking to the driver that the fare (to) take him into the city centre was too much," Redmond told the Associated Press.
"The last thing I remember him saying before he left was he does not feel safe travelling with equipment worth 30,000 euros ($62,400)."
Keegan's sister, Nikki Keegan, in London, said the family had still not been able to recover his belongings that police gathered from his apartment in Nairobi. His parents Mike and Trish Keegan live in New Zealand, where their son was formerly a carpenter in New Plymouth.
- NZPA
