Kenyan Pastor Charged To Court For Murder Of Over 100 People

Self-acclaimed Kenyan pastor, Mr Paul Mackenzie, and his associates have been found guilty for the murder of about 191 people, on Monday, most of which were children.

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‎ The cult base inland from the Kenyan beach resort of Malindi, in what became known as the "Shakahola Forest Massacre” is where Mackenzie ordered members of his cult to starve their children to death so they could "meet Jesus". His doctrine also abhors education and teaches that modern medicine is "evil".

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‎Twenty-eight other leaders of his cult were also convicted of murder. They had all pleaded not guilty, repeatedly insisting that nobody was forced to die.

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‎ In the port city of Mombasa, Justice Diana Mochache , in  her eight-hour judgement, said Mackenzie's followers believed he was "Jesus's mouthpiece".One of his co-accused said Mackenzie had told his followers that anyone who "resisted the directive to fast must be forced to go to heaven through kicks and blows".

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‎Burials inside the forest where the cult was based were called "weddings". Those who died "were celebrated as having wedded with Jesus", the judge said.

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‎One witness stated that a pregnant woman had been barred from nursing her new-born baby, who died 12 days later. "She was instructed to fast to death and follow her children," the witness said.

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‎Mackenzie's former head of security, Enos Amanya Ngala, was initially accused but then entered a plea deal and became a witness for the prosecution.

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‎Mackenzie and other leaders of the cult also face a raft of other legal cases, including for terrorism, radicalisation and denying education to children, which they denied in separate cases.

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‎But this is the first time the pastor has faced a verdict on the most serious charges of murder. He was previously arrested in 2023, In the three years since the discovery, more bodies of children, women and men have been unearthed, bringing the total to well over 400.

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‎ Mwiti a victim of the accused, said ahead of the verdict “all six of my children died in Shakahola forest," emotionally holding a photograph of his family "i only found and buried the remains of my son Samuel."

‎"I am satisfied that the prosecution has proved the case against all the 29 accused persons for the murder of 190 children and one adult," the judge said.

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‎Relatives of the victims were in court, many making their way to Mombasa from rural communities along the coast.

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‎Francis Wanje, 62, lost eight family members, including his daughter and two grandchildren, in Shakahola.

‎He said, voicing anger over government’s procrastination. "This day, to me, is a very, very important day; we are expecting a ruling that will be a lesson to the whole public, so that such kinds of things will not happen again”.

‎There have been calls in Kenya for tougher regulations on religious organisations after it emerged that Mackenzie had been arrested twice, once in 2017 and 2019, but was acquitted, another arrest was made in April 2023, after a rights group tipped off authorities and some followers were rescued.

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‎The prosecution said Mackenzie "initiated and directed" extreme fasting at his 800-acre (325 hectare) ranch in Shakahola forest, claiming there was a "structured hierarchy of death" which said children should die first, followed by teenagers, women, and then men.

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‎The children mostly died from starvation, but also from "asphyxia, neck compression and traumatic head injury", prosecutors said, based on post-mortems and police reports.

‎The subsequent police operation exposed hundreds of shallow mass graves, with a soaring death toll that required a pause in excavations as local morgues ran out of space.

‎He established the Good News International Church in 2003, and set up branches in Nairobi and along Kenya's coast that attracted thousands of devotees, though he claimed it closed in 2019.

The Kenya national commission on human rights said in 2024 that the death toll was 429, with some victims are still unidentified.

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