A Kenyan pastor named Paul Mackenzie has been found guilty of murdering 191 people, among them 190 children, after he ordered members of his religious cult to starve their children to death so they could “meet Jesus.”
On Monday, the BBC reported that 28 other leaders of the cult were likewise convicted of murder. Every one of the defendants had entered a plea of not guilty, insisting again and again that no one was forced to die.
In an eight-hour judgement delivered in the port city of Mombasa, Justice Diana Mochache stated that Mackenzie’s followers regarded him as “Jesus’s mouthpiece.”
One of his co-accused informed the court that Mackenzie had taught his followers that anyone who refused to fast should be made to do so through violence.
The co-accused said that anyone who “resisted the directive to fast must be forced to go to heaven through kicks and blows.”
The judge noted that burials in the forest where the cult was based were referred to as “weddings” and added that those who died “were celebrated as having wedded with Jesus.”
According to the BBC, seventeen men were recruited from a nearby town to exhume shallow graves in the forest, with some receiving as little as $8 (£6) a day.
One of the gravediggers, known as James, described what was uncovered during the operation.
“Every grave we found had at least three bodies,” James told the BBC. “Some of the remains were of children as young as a few weeks old.”
He added, “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.”
The gravediggers also revealed finding children whose “hands and legs were tied and bodies wrapped in bedsheets.”
Salim Karisa, another gravedigger, said that residents of the nearby town of Shakahola knew some of the victims, since cult members came there to buy supplies and collect water from the River Galana.
“We would sometimes carry people on our motorbikes into the forest. But it was so planned and secretive that nobody could tell what was happening inside,” Karisa said.
In 2003, Mackenzie established Good News International Ministries. During the next 16 years, the church drew thousands of followers through its branches throughout Kenya.
The church ran a television station called Times TV, which aired Mackenzie’s sermons from Malindi. Among his teachings were claims that education was “evil,” that healthcare was “against the doctrine,” and that digital identity cards were “the mark of the devil.”
Dan Paul Mackenzie, Mackenzie’s son, said that he had worked as a cameraperson for the church.
“The children would sit at the back, adults in the middle, and everyone would sing worship songs all morning,” he said.
The self-proclaimed pastor would start his sermons at noon, and some sessions involved “casting out demons.”
The church’s main branch shut down in 2019, and afterward Mackenzie relocated to Shakahola Forest, where he urged his followers to come and join him.
Peter Shukrani, who is 23, relocated to the forest together with his mother. He had been attending Mackenzie’s church since the age of eight and looked upon the pastor as his “spiritual father.”
Shukrani stated that he would “never say a bad word about him.”
Yet Shukrani became ill in the forest, where medicine was not allowed. His condition worsened once his mother threw away the medicines he required.
“My mother would throw away all the medicine I was supposed to take because she believed that only God could heal me,” Shukrani said.
Describing life in the forest, he stated that residents lived in mud houses scattered across the vast area.
“We lived a quiet normal life, fasting for a few days then having a small meal,” he said.
Local herders found the first remains in March 2023, by which point hundreds of people had already died.
Karisa said that some followers were so weak that they died as they were being carried out of the forest.
“We would carry someone out of the forest, but they were so frail that they would die in our arms,” he said.
Shukrani was one of the people rescued from the forest. He said that before his rescue he had been bedridden for weeks and believed he would have died without intervention.
“My mother believed Pastor Mackenzie’s doctrine that medicine was evil. He said, “I would have died if I wasn’t rescued from the Shakahola forest.”
Because of decomposition, many of the bodies recovered from the forest remain unidentified. Court documents refer to several victims as “unknown male child,” identifying them by where their graves were located and the dates they were found.
Even though the cult members suffered greatly, including people who died from starvation, strangulation, and bludgeoning, Shukrani kept defending Mackenzie before the verdict was announced.
He described the pastor as “a good person who cares for me.”
“Mackenzie didn’t force anyone to fast. People made those choices by themselves because of their beliefs. I still love him, and he is still my pastor,” Shukrani said.
Dan Mackenzie, though, thought his father ought to be convicted of murder, pointing to his position of authority over the followers.
“He was the leader; he was someone who they were looking [up to]. So he is a murderer of mass killing,” he stated before the verdict.
