The leader of a doomsday cult in Kenya has been sentenced to 200 years in prison for the murder of 190 children and one adult in one of the world’s worst sectarian disasters in recent history.
The sentence, including 100 years in prison for murder by starvation and 100 years in prison for direct homicide, came two weeks after a court in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa found the cult leader guilty of the crimes.
Prosecutors said Paul Mackenzie and his church Good News International led an apocalyptic Christian sect whose members were ordered to starve themselves and their children to go to heaven before the end of the world.
His accomplices threatened and beat the victims to ensure they followed his orders. The emaciated bodies were found scattered in shallow graves and thrown into latrines. Some had been buried alive.
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.
In total, more than 400 bodies were found. Many were badly decomposed and only 26 could be identified.
Mackenzie denied the murder charges, saying he did not force the victims to starve, but the court rejected this argument.
The Shakahola tragedy has struck Kenya since the discovery of mass graves in the forest more than three years ago.
It raised questions about how Mackenzie was able to continue operating despite being on authorities’ radar since 2017, when police raided his premises.
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.
Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, forbade cult members from sending their children to school and going to hospital when they were ill, calling such institutions satanic.
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 March 2023, when a 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 his relatives said he brought forward the date he told his supporters that “the world would end”. The police arrested him again and began to search the forest more systematically and exhume mass graves.
Last month’s ruling related to 191 deaths while investigations into more than 200 other 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 faces other charges relating to the forest deaths, including terrorism, which he has denied.
Prosecutors said that while in custody he also directed the deaths of 52 people in the village of Kwa Binzaro, about 30 kilometers from Shakahola. Mackenzie has pleaded not guilty in the case.
Reuters contributed to this report
Gn headline
