The leader of a Kenyan doomsday cult, Paul Mackenzie, has been found guilty of murdering 191 people, all but one of them children.
Mackenzie ordered members of his cult to starve their children to death so they could “meet Jesus”.
His doctrine said that education was forbidden and modern medicine was “evil”.
Twenty-eight other leaders of his cult were also convicted of murder. They had all pleaded not guilty, repeatedly insisting that nobody was forced to die.
Judge details cult’s deadly practices
Delivering her eight-hour judgement in the port city of Mombasa, Justice Diana Mochache said Mackenzie’s followers believed he was “Jesus’s mouthpiece”.
One of his co-accused said Mackenzie had told his followers that anyone who “resisted the directive to fast must be forced to go to heaven through kicks and blows”.
Burials inside the forest where the cult was based were called “weddings”. Those who died “were celebrated as having wedded with Jesus”, the judge said.
One witness stated that a pregnant woman had been barred from nursing her new-born baby, who died 12 days later. “She was instructed to fast to death and follow her children,” the witness said.
Mackenzie’s former head of security, Enos Amanya Ngala, was initially accused but then entered a plea deal and became a witness for the prosecution.
Mackenzie and other leaders of the cult also face a raft of other legal cases, including for terrorism, radicalisation and denying education to children.
But this is the first time the pastor has faced a verdict on the most serious charges of murder. He is due to be sentenced on 6 November.
Families describe the devastation
He was arrested in 2023, after the discovery of more than 400 bodies in shallow graves in Shakahola forest near the Kenyan coast, where Mackenzie had led his followers from across the country.
Stephen Mwiti, 48, said he lost all six of his children to the cult. His former wife was one of those convicted of murder alongside Mackenzie.
“I’m a happy man, that all persons have been convicted,” he told the BBC outside court.
“All six of my children died in Shakahola forest,” Mwiti said ahead of the verdict, visibly emotional holding a photograph of his family. “I only found and buried the remains of my son Samuel.”
Seventeen men were hired from the nearby town for the horrifying task of digging up the shallow graves. Some were paid just $8 (£6) a day.
“Every grave we found had at least three bodies,” James, one of the gravediggers, told the BBC. “Some of the remains were of children as young as a few weeks old.”
“We once found 12 bodies of children in a line inside a grave. It was massive, the bodies were arranged like clothes. One on top of another.”
Gravediggers described some of the bodies of children as having had their “hands and legs tied and bodies wrapped in bedsheets”.
Although many of Mackenzie’s followers were from elsewhere in Kenya, some of the remains are of people who were familiar to the community because the people in the cult would often go to nearby Shakahola town for supplies and to fetch water from the River Galana which flows through the town.
“We would sometimes carry people on our motorbikes into the forest,” said Salim Karisa, another gravedigger. “But it was so planned and secretive that nobody could tell what was happening inside.”
How Mackenzie’s cult attracted followers
Mackenzie established Good News International Ministries in 2003. Over the next 16 years, the church grew in popularity to draw thousands of followers in the church’s branches across Kenya.
His church ran a television station called Times TV which would broadcast his sermons from his church in Malindi.
His End Days sermons included conspiracy theories that described education as “evil”, healthcare as “against the doctrine” and digital identity cards as “the mark of the devil”.
Mackenzie’s son, Dan Paul Mackenzie, said he worked as a cameraperson in the church. “The children would sit at the back, adults in the middle, and everyone would sing worship songs all morning.”
The self-proclaimed pastor would start his fiery sermons at noon, some of which included “casting out demons”.
Source: BBC
Also Read: Kenya stravation cult awaiting murder trial verdict
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