Kenya's Nobel winner Maathai receives death threats

NAIROBI, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Kenya's Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai said on Wednesday she has received death threats since urging tribal elders to help stop ethnic killings following a disputed Dec. 27 presidential election.

Maathai, a lauded environmentalist and veteran of the Kenyan civil rights movement, said she reported the matter to police after getting three text messages on her telephone on Tuesday.

"Because of your opposing the government at all times ... we have decided to look for your head very soon," said one of the messages she read to reporters. She urged the government to restore bodyguards whom she says it recently recalled.

Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her environmental work, was one of several big names to lose their seats in parliamentary elections also held on Dec. 27.

She is the latest of several civil rights activists -- including Maina Kiai, head of the government-funded National Commission on Human Rights -- to receive death threats during Kenya's political crisis. (Reporting by Linda Muriuki; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)