A Kenyan court has convicted Christian cult leader Paul Mackenzie and about 30 other suspects over the deaths of 191 people, including 190 children, in a case involving an alleged organised campaign of deadly fasting.
Mackenzie, who is in his early 50s and formerly led the Good News International Church, was found guilty yesterday alongside his co-accused over the deaths linked to the Shakahola forest in eastern Kenya.
The suspects were charged with murder in 2024 after authorities exhumed hundreds of bodies from the forest, where Mackenzie and his associates were accused of operating a doomsday cult.
According to Kenya’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the court found that the deaths resulted from an organised system in which religious teachings and a hierarchical structure were used to direct and enforce fasting among followers.
“Fasting was implemented sequentially, beginning with children, while guards controlled movement and prevented followers from escaping,” the prosecution office said.
Mackenzie was accused of instructing his followers to starve themselves and their children to death in the belief that they would reach heaven and meet Jesus.
Authorities began exhuming bodies in Shakahola forest in April 2023. So far, 429 bodies have been recovered, raising the possibility of further charges as investigations continue.
Autopsy findings showed that many of the victims died from starvation, while some bodies had signs of blunt-force trauma and strangulation.
The case has drawn widespread attention to the dangers of religious extremism and the exploitation of vulnerable followers through radical teachings.
The latest convictions relate to the deaths of 191 people, most of them children, in one of Kenya’s most disturbing cases involving alleged religiously motivated killings.
