By Ammu Kannampilly
NAIROBI, Oct 19 (Reuters) – More than three years after Kenyan police unearthed mass graves linked to a starvation cult led by evangelist Paul Mackenzie, the preacher was convicted of murder for the deaths of 190 children and one adult.
Mackenzie’s case has gripped the East African nation since officers found human remains in a forest near the Indian Ocean town of Malindi in April 2023, kicking off an investigation that would eventually unearth over 400 bodies, nearly half of them children.
The former taxi driver founded the Good News International Church in 2003, preaching increasingly apocalyptic sermons and urging his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could go to heaven before the world ended.
In a March 2023 YouTube video, Mackenzie — who had thousands of followers in person and online — said that he was guided by “the voice of Christ” when he preached messages about the world coming to an end that year.
“I followed the voice that told me I had finished the work,” he said.
PRESIDENT HAS SAID DEATHS SHOULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED
Videos of the preacher show him dressed in nondescript clothing, speaking calmly to hundreds of people as he recounted his experiences as an exorcist and his victory over “demonic” spirits.
Mackenzie denied charges of murder, manslaughter, child torture and terrorism in a case that highlighted the failings of Kenyan authorities and the lack of oversight governing churches in the predominantly Christian country.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, an independent body, said it was deplorable that Mackenzie could have been first arrested in 2017 and charged with radicalisation but continued to operate for years.
“This points to a failure in the investigation and prosecution processes. The arrest should have triggered investigations that would have saved the lives of several people,” the KNCHR said in a 2024 report.
Kenyan President William Ruto has said that government agencies should have been able to prevent the deaths, adding that he took responsibility as president.
DOZENS OF CHILDREN FOUND LIVING IN COMPOUND
Mackenzie grew up in Kwale, a rural county in southeast Kenya, and moved to Malindi in the early 1990s to work as a taxi driver.
There, he became increasingly focused on religion, Japheth Charo, who worked as a driver alongside him, told Reuters in 2023.
“He started attacking other faiths like Muslims and Catholics. His preaching started becoming extreme,” said Charo, whose family had joined Mackenzie’s church but left after his sermons started to alarm them.
In 2012, Mackenzie registered a TV company called Good News Media and he broadcast sermons on a YouTube channel that had 7,000 subscribers, KNCHR wrote in a report on the case.
Police searched Mackenzie’s Malindi compound in 2017 and found dozens of children living there without attending school. He was charged with offering education at an unregistered facility but continued his teachings until 2019, when his church was shut down and he relocated to the Shakahola Forest.
People were lured there by the promise of affordable arable land but found armed militia who enforced the fasting and eventual deaths of followers, KNCHR found. Those who defied orders to fast or tried to escape were strangled or clubbed to death, it added.
STARVE THEMSELVES BEFORE THE WORLD’S END
Mackenzie, believed to be in his early 50s, is a domineering figure who forced his followers to cut themselves off from society, forbidding them from engaging with schools or hospitals, institutions he branded as satanic, relatives of victims said.
“He told them to starve themselves ahead of the world’s end on April 15, saying he would be the last one and that he would lock the doors,” Stephen Mwiti, whose wife and six children were among the fatalities, told Reuters in 2023.
Mackenzie’s grip on his followers continued even after the graves in Shakahola were exposed. Prosecutors charged him in connection with the deaths of 52 other people after bodies were exhumed last year in Kwa Binzaro village, some 30 km (18 miles) from Shakahola.
They said he masterminded and oversaw the offences at Kwa Binzaro while in detention, using radical teachings to draw victims to the remote site. Mackenzie has pleaded not guilty in that case.
(Reporting by Ammu Kannampilly;Editing by David Lewis and Alison Williams)
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