Cult leader to be charged with mass murder as '400 starve themselves to death'

16 January 2024 , 16:07

926     0

Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie (centre), who set up the Good News International Church (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

The alleged leader of a doomsday cult in Kenya is set to be charged after the deaths of 429 people feared to have “starved themselves to death to meet Jesus”.

Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie was arrested in April 2023 after hundreds of bodies were discovered in shallow graves in Shakahola forest, Malindi, where the Good News International had been operating. Most showed signs of being starved while others are feared to have been assaulted.

The dead included men, women and children - some of whom were all from the same family unit. Survivors told investigators the pastor had ordered them to fast to death before the world ended so they could meet Jesus.

Kenya's director of public prosecutions has today ordered 95 people from the doomsday cult be charged with murder, manslaughter, radicalization, cruelty and child torture, among other crimes. Prosecutors had been handed a fortnight's deadline to make them public or the suspects could be released. Of the 95 suspects, 64 had been found in the forest and were at first mistaken for victims.

The shocking crimes emerged when police rescued 15 emaciated parishioners from Mackenzie's church in Kilifi county in Kenya's southeast. Four died when the group was taken to a hospital.

Baby boy has spent his life in hospital as doctors are 'scared' to discharge him

Autopsies on bodies showed starvation, strangulation or suffocation. The suspects also face charges including assault causing grievous bodily harm and engaging in organized criminal activity. Mackenzie is already serving a separate one-year prison sentence after being found guilty of operating a film studio and producing films without a valid licence.

Mackenzie was arrested last year (AFP via Getty Images)

Last year the entire sprawling forest, which stretches across 800 acres of the coastal city of Malindi, was sealed off and treated as a crime scene. Victor Kaudo of the Malindi Social Justice Centre told Citizen TV at the time: "When we are in this forest and come to an area where we see a big and tall cross, we know that means more than five people are buried there.”

Kenyan daily The Standard reported bestowed the biblical names "Nazareth, Bethlehem and Judea" on three local villages and baptised his followers in ponds. He then told them it was God's will for them to fast. Kenya is a deeply religious country, but it has a history of unregulated churches and cults springing up and taking advantage of the faithful. All 95 are scheduled to be charged in court later this week.

Antony Clements-Thrower