Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie jailed 200 years over 191 starvation-linked killings
A court in Mombasa has sentenced Kenyan doomsday-sect leader Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison—100 years for murder by starvation and 100 for direct homicide—for the deaths of 190 children and one adult, among the worst cult disasters in recent years. The penalty came two weeks after conviction. Prosecutors said Mackenzie’s Good News International church ordered members to starve themselves and their children so they would reach heaven before the world ended; accomplices threatened and beat victims. Bodies were found in shallow graves and latrines; some people had been buried alive.
Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, was arrested in 2023 after a tip-off. Authorities later recovered more than 400 bodies in the Shakahola forest in south-eastern Kenya; most were too decomposed to identify, and only 26 were named. He denied forcing anyone to fast; the court rejected that. Police had searched his premises in 2017; his church was shut in 2019 and he moved to the forest, where followers lived in polythene-and-thatch camps given biblical names such as Jerusalem and Judea. He forbade school and hospital care as satanic. In March 2023 a man reported that his brother and wife had starved their children on Mackenzie’s orders; Mackenzie was bailed, then rearrested after relatives said he brought forward the predicted end of the world. Last month’s judgment covered 191 deaths; more than 200 others remain under investigation. Justice Kavedza-Mochache said some children were isolated and denied food while parents watched. Mackenzie also faces terrorism charges, which he denies, and has pleaded not guilty over 52 alleged deaths in Kwa Binzaro, about 18 miles from Shakahola, said to have been directed while he was in detention.
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