A Kenyan court on Monday found cult leader Paul Mackenzie and some 30 others guilty of the murder of 191 people, including 190 children and one adult. Sentencing for all defendants is scheduled for 6 November.
Mackenzie was arrested in 2023 following a police tip-off, and several weeks later authorities began finding bodies in shallow graves in the Shakahola forest, near the coast in south-eastern Kenya. More than 400 bodies have since been found in the forest, but many remains were in an advanced state of decomposition, resulting in only 26 victims being identified. Today's verdict concerns the deaths of 191 people, while the circumstances of the other victims' deaths are still under investigation.
Prosecutors stated that Mackenzie and his organisation, the "Good News International Church", established a Christian sect that preached the end of the world and instructed followers to starve themselves and their children to death to reach heaven before the world perished. Mackenzie rejected the murder charges, claiming he did not force the victims to starve, but the court dismissed this argument.
Judge Diana Kavedza Mochache described during the hearing, which lasted more than eight hours, how individual children were isolated and left without food while their parents watched. Mackenzie was present in the courtroom, seated next to his wife, who is also among the defendants. Family members of those who died in the Shakahola forest attended the sentencing hearing. Among them was 62-year-old Francis Wanje, who lost eight family members in the sect, including two grandchildren. "It has been extremely difficult for us as a family and has left deep psychological scars. I have waited a long time for this day," Wanje said.
Questions have also arisen as to how Mackenzie was able to continue operating despite the police having known about him since 2017, when they searched the premises of his religious community. Authorities closed his church in 2019, after which he moved to the Shakahola forest. Kenyan President William Ruto stated in 2023 that state institutions had to prevent the deaths of so many people and, as president, took responsibility for the failures.
According to testimony from people familiar with the sect's activities, Mackenzie organised the mass starvation in three phases: first the children were to die, then the women and young men, and finally the remaining men. Mackenzie, who worked as a taxi driver before becoming a preacher, forbade his followers from sending their children to school or taking them to hospital when ill. According to former sect members, he referred to schools and hospitals as satanic institutions. Sect members lived in improvised shelters made of plastic sheets and straw, and Mackenzie divided the area where they lived into sections with biblical names, such as Jerusalem and Judaea.
The first details of the followers' suffering emerged in mid-March 2023. A local resident then reported to the police that his brother and sister-in-law had, following Mackenzie's instructions, starved their own children to death. Mackenzie was arrested afterwards but released on bail. According to family members of the victims, after his release he moved up the date he claimed would mark the end of the world, announcing it earlier than before. Police re-arrested him in April 2023, when a more extensive search of the Shakahola forest and the excavation of mass graves began.
Mackenzie also faces other charges related to the deaths of his followers, including those for offences linked to terrorism. He rejects all these charges. Prosecutors also claim that, while in custody, he continued to issue instructions that led to the deaths of a further 52 people in the village of Kwa Binzaro, located about 30 kilometres from the Shakahola forest. In that separate proceeding, Mackenzie pleaded not guilty.
