A Kenyan court has found starvation cult leader Paul Mackenzie and around 30 others guilty of murder over the deaths of 190 children and one adult in one of the world’s worst sectarian disasters in recent history.
Mackenzie was arrested in 2023 after police received a tip, and weeks later authorities began discovering bodies in shallow graves in the Shakahola forest near the coast in southeastern Kenya.
Prosecutors say Mackenzie and his Good News International church organized an apocalyptic Christian cult in which they ordered their followers and their children to starve to go to heaven before the end of the world.
Mackenzie denied the murder charges, saying he did not force the victims to starve, but the court rejected this argument.
In total, more than 400 bodies were found in the Shakahola forest. Many were badly decomposed and only 26 of them could be identified.
Monday’s judgment covered 191 deaths while investigations into the remaining deaths continue.
Judge Diana Kavedza Mochache told a hearing that lasted more than eight hours that in some cases children were isolated and deprived of food while their parents watched.
Mackenzie was in court, dressed in a striped polo shirt and red pants, sitting alongside his wife, one of the co-accused.
He remained silent, “staring into space before the decision was made.”
Relatives of some of those who died in the forest gathered to hear the judgment at the Mombasa High Court.
Francis Wanje, 62, lost eight family members, including two grandchildren, to the cult.
Speaking before the verdict, he said: “It’s really been a very heavy thing (for) us as a family, and it’s really taken us very far in terms of psychological problems… I was hoping for this particular day.”
The Shakahola tragedy has struck Kenya since the discovery of mass graves in the coastal forest more than three years ago.
It raised questions about how Mackenzie was able to continue operating despite being on the radar of authorities since 2017, when his premises were raided by police. In 2019, authorities closed Mackenzie’s church and he moved “to the Shakahola Forest,” police said.
The case also led to calls for tighter control of churches and other religious organizations in a country where religious faith plays a prominent role in public life.
Kenyan President William Ruto said in 2023 that government agencies should have been able to prevent these deaths. He said he had fulfilled his responsibilities as president.
People with direct knowledge of the cult’s activities said Mackenzie planned the mass starvation in three phases: first the children, then the women and young men, and finally the remaining men.
Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, banned cult members from sending their children to school and going to hospitals when they were sick, calling such institutions satanic, some of his followers told Reuters in a 2023 article.
Sect members lived in makeshift houses made of polythene sheets and thatch that Mackenzie divided into areas with biblical names such as Jerusalem and Judea.
The plight of his followers began to emerge in mid-March 2023, when a local man told police that his brother and his wife had starved their children to death in the forest on Mackenzie’s orders.
Mackenzie was arrested but released on bail, after which those close to him say he brought forward the date he told his supporters that “the end of the world” would happen. Police arrested him again in April 2023 and began combing the forest more systematically and exhuming mass graves.
Mackenzie faces other charges relating to the forest deaths, including related to terrorism, which he has denied.
Prosecutors say that while in custody he also directed the deaths of 52 people in the village of Kwa Binzaro, about 30 km from Shakahola. Mackenzie has pleaded not guilty in the case.
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