Court accused Kenyan Pastor of murder

A Kenyan court has accused Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, a self-styled pastor and leader of a starvation cult, of murdering nearly 200 people in a forest by the Indian Ocean. Mackenzie and dozens of his alleged accomplices are facing multiple charges, including terrorism, manslaughter, child torture, and cruelty.

According to court documents seen by Agence France-Presse, Mackenzie and 29 other suspects denied 191 counts of murder. They are accused of persuading hundreds of their followers to starve themselves to death to meet Jesus. A 31st suspect was found mentally unfit to stand trial and was ordered to return to the Malindi High Court in a month.

The Kenyan authorities outlawed the church of Mackenzie, the head of the Good News International Church, as an organized criminal group in January 2024. Mackenzie is currently under trial for murder, child torture, and “terrorism” after the discovery of hundreds of bodies of his followers who had died of starvation on his orders last April.

The Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki issued an official gazette document declaring the church an organized criminal group. "This would allow further investigation and prosecution of members who had assisted Mackenzie.

The exhumations of more than 400 bodies took months to cover tens of thousands of acres of the Shakahola forest near Kenya’s coast. These were some of the worst cult-related disasters in the world in recent history.

The prosecutors said they would charge 95 people in total on counts of murder, manslaughter, terrorism, and torture. They said the delays in bringing charges were due to the difficulty of finding and digging up so many human remains and conducting autopsies. Some of Mackenzie’s followers were saved from the forest, severely malnourished.

Some people who knew about the cult's activities told the Reuters last year that Mackenzie had planned the mass starvation in three stages: first children, then women and young men, and finally the remaining men.

Mackenzie, a former taxi driver in the coastal city of Mombasa, banned cult members from sending their children to school and from seeking medical care when they were sick. He called such institutions satanic, some of his followers said.

In December, Mackenzie was sentenced to 12 months in prison for making and distributing films unauthorized by the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB).