Kenyan cult leader convicted of starving more than 190 children to death in hopes of ‘meeting Jesus’

The leader of a Kenyan Christian sect has been convicted of murdering 190 children through an organized system of forced fasting and abuse.

Paul Mackenzie was convicted on Monday, along with around 30 other suspects, by the Mombasa High Court for the deaths of 191 people, all but one of them children, in the Shakahola forest in eastern Kenya. Prosecutors have called the trial one of the “most important” criminal cases ever brought in Kenya.

The court found that the deaths were the result of an “organized system in which religious teachings and an established hierarchy were used to direct and enforce a death fast among Mackenzie’s supporters,” Kenya’s attorney general’s office said.

“The fast was implemented sequentially, starting with children, while guards controlled movements and prevented followers from escaping,” the office said in a statement. Mackenzie also discouraged modern medicine and formal education, the court heard.

Mackenzie, in his early 50s, and his co-defendants were charged with the murders in 2024 after hundreds of children’s bodies were exhumed from Shakahola Forest, where Mackenzie and his associates were accused of leading a death cult.

Authorities began digging up bodies in Shakahola Forest in April 2023. So far, they have recovered 429 bodies. Other charges could follow.

Mackenzie, who led the Good News International Church, was accused of asking his followers to starve themselves and their children so they could reach heaven and meet Jesus, CNN previously reported.

Autopsy findings cited Monday by Judge Diana Kavedza indicated that some victims died of suffocation, neck compression or head injuries, rather than simple starvation.

Mackenzie’s lawyer, Lawrence Obonyo, told reporters Monday that the defense team plans to appeal, saying his client maintains he did not force anyone to fast and that the victims’ actions were voluntary.

In a lengthy ruling that lasted more than eight hours Monday, the judge described how Mackenzie used sermons and written materials to persuade his followers that the outside world was evil and that they could only find salvation by settling in the forest.

According to the judge, evidence taken from his phone, including WhatsApp messages, showed communications with his followers before their move to Shakahola. She said supporters were persuaded to abandon their homes, families and livelihoods.

The judge also described how those who resisted Mackenzie’s directive to fast were forced to comply. “The children were restrained, deprived of food and punished for trying to eat or escape,” the director of public prosecutions said.

CNN had previously reported on families searching for missing loved ones in the Shakahola forest. Rodgers Shibutse, a Nairobi resident, said he found his mother’s remains among those exhumed in February 2024.

Shibutse told CNN on Monday that Mackenzie had caused immense pain and he wanted him to be sentenced to life in prison. Mackenzie and his co-defendants will be sentenced on November 6.

Asked if this would bring justice to his mother, Shibutse replied: “Not 100% justice, but at least the government has done something. »