In a Kenyan court on Tuesday, the leader of a starvation cult, self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, and 29 alleged accomplices were charged with murder in connection with the deaths of nearly 200 individuals in a forest near the Indian Ocean.
Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, already facing charges of terrorism, manslaughter, child torture, and cruelty, is accused of inciting hundreds of followers to starve to death with the belief of “meeting Jesus.”
The court documents, as per AFP, reveal that Mackenzie and the 29 other suspects pleaded not guilty to 191 counts of murder. Another suspect, deemed mentally unfit to stand trial, was ordered to return to the Malindi High Court in a month.
The cult leader maintains his plea of not guilty to all charges. Mackenzie was arrested in April the previous year after bodies were discovered in the Shakahola forest, causing shock worldwide.
Autopsies indicated that the majority of the 429 victims died of hunger, while others, including children, showed signs of strangulation, beating, or suffocation.
Dubbed the “Shakahola forest massacre,” the case prompted the government to call for stricter regulation of fringe denominations. Kenya, predominantly Christian, has struggled to monitor unscrupulous churches and cults involved in criminal activities.
According to court documents, Good News International Ministries, founded by Mackenzie, is described as “an organised criminal group engaged in organised criminal activities,” resulting in the deaths of numerous followers.
Questions have arisen about how Mackenzie evaded law enforcement despite a history of extremism and past legal cases.
A Senate commission of inquiry in October reported that Mackenzie, a father of seven, faced charges in 2017 for extreme preaching. In 2017, he was acquitted of radicalisation charges related to providing illegal school teaching, rejecting the formal educational system as incompatible with the Bible.
In 2019, he was accused of links to the deaths of two children believed to have been starved, suffocated, and buried in a shallow grave in Shakahola. He was released on bail pending trial.
Kenya, with over 4,000 registered churches in a population of 53 million, has faced challenges in regulating religious institutions, with previous attempts met with opposition for potentially undermining constitutional guarantees of the separation of church and state.
