Malindi beach on Kenya's coast, near the Shakahola forest where hundreds of bodies were found in shallow graves. (Image: Otis 254 / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0)
A Kenyan court on Monday found starvation cult leader Paul Mackenzie and 28 others guilty of murder over the deaths of 190 children and one adult, in one of the world's worst cult-related disasters in recent history.
Mombasa High Court Justice Diana Kavedza convicted all 29 accused on all counts of murder. "I am satisfied that the prosecution has proved the case against all the 29 accused persons for the murder of 190 children and one adult," she ruled. "I reject the defence by the accused persons that the victims, who were all below the age of 16 years, voluntarily fasted to death."
The court found the deaths resulted from an organised system in which religious teachings and an established hierarchy were used to direct and enforce deadly fasting among Mackenzie's followers. "Fasting was implemented sequentially, beginning with children, while guards controlled movement and prevented followers from escaping," the office of the director of public prosecutions said in a statement. Mackenzie also discouraged modern medicine and formal education, the court heard.
Postmortem findings cited by the judge indicated that some victims died from suffocation, neck compression or head injuries, rather than starvation alone. Prosecutors said Mackenzie and his Good News International Church organised a Christian doomsday sect in which followers were ordered to starve themselves and their children to death to go to heaven before the world ended. They dubbed the trial one of Kenya's "most consequential" criminal cases ever.
Mackenzie, who is in his early 50s, was arrested in 2023 after police received a tip-off, and weeks later authorities began uncovering bodies in shallow graves in the Shakahola Forest near the coast in southeastern Kenya. Authorities started digging in April 2023 and have so far recovered 429 bodies. Monday's judgment covered 191 deaths, while investigations into the other deaths are ongoing, and further charges could follow.
Mackenzie's attorney Lawrence Obonyo told reporters the defence team planned to appeal, saying his client maintained that he hadn't forced anyone to fast and that the victims' actions were voluntary. Mackenzie and his co-accused are due to be sentenced on November 6. He has also denied separate charges of manslaughter and terrorism.
Family members of some victims gathered at Mombasa High Court to hear the judgment. Francis Wanje, 62, who lost eight family members including a daughter and two grandchildren to the cult, said before the verdict: "It has been really a heavy thing for us as a family, and it has really taken us far in terms of psychological problems. I was hoping for this particular day."
The Shakahola tragedy has gripped Kenya for more than three years and has prompted calls for tougher regulation of religious organisations, after it emerged that Mackenzie had previously been arrested twice but released.