Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie jailed 200 years for 191 starvation deaths
A Mombasa court has sentenced Kenyan doomsday cult leader Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison for the murder of 191 people, all but one of them children. He and 27 co-defendants were convicted of instructing followers of his Shakahola group to starve children so they could “meet Jesus.” Mackenzie was arrested in 2023 after more than 400 bodies were found in shallow graves in Shakahola forest near the Kenyan coast. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, citing the scale of the crimes and what they called his lack of remorse, and asked for life terms for the co-accused. Before Friday’s hearing, Francis Wanje, who lost eight relatives including two grandchildren, told the BBC’s Newsday he wanted a sentence matching Mackenzie’s deeds. The accused pleaded for mercy; before conviction on 19 October they had pleaded not guilty and said nobody was forced to die. In an eight-hour judgment last month, Justice Diana Mochache said followers saw Mackenzie as “Jesus’s mouthpiece,” that opponents were beaten to death, and that burials were called “weddings” with Jesus. A co-accused said those who resisted fasting were to be forced to heaven “through kicks and blows.” Most deaths were from starvation; others from suffocation, strangulation or head injuries, with some bodies too decomposed to determine a cause and some victims dying after rescue. President William Ruto’s commission of inquiry was later ruled unconstitutional. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights found local officials had ignored the cult. Wanje reported it in March 2023; a police relative and a former member saved his grandson. Mackenzie founded Good News International Ministries in 2003, preached via Times TV from Malindi, shut the main church in 2019 and moved to Shakahola. Other charges include terrorism, radicalisation and denying children education.
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