Kenyan court sentences starvation cult leader to 200 years

A Kenyan court has sentenced starvation cult leader Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison for the murder of 190 children and one adult.

The sentence was comprised of 100 years for murder by starvation and 100 years by direct homicide, Justice Diana Kavedza said on Friday, as she read out the judgement. The 191 victims were starved to death on his orders and buried in a forest.

Twenty-eight accomplices, who were convicted alongside Mackenzie last month, were also sentenced to various prison terms.

The self-proclaimed pastor and ⁠⁠his Good News International Church organised a Christian doomsday sect in which they ordered followers to starve themselves and their children to death, so they could go to heaven before the world ended and “meet Jesus”.

His accomplices threatened and beat victims to ensure they followed his orders.

Mackenzie, wearing a grey polo shirt and black trousers, smiled as he entered a tent set up outside the court where the hearing was held.

He had denied murder charges, saying he did not force the victims to starve, but the court in Mombasa rejected his defence.

Police arrested Mackenzie in 2023 after receiving a tip-off. After several weeks, authorities began uncovering bodies in the Shakahola Forest near the coast in southeastern Kenya.

Emaciated bodies were found scattered in shallow graves and dumped in latrines. Some had been buried alive.

More than 400 people died in the Shakahola tragedy, according to Kenyan authorities, making it one of the country’s deadliest cult-related disasters.

The scale of the killing is comparable to that of the doomsday cult that killed more than 700 people in Uganda in 2000, and the 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana when an American cult leader killed more than 900 people by ordering them to drink poison.

Investigations into the Mackenzie affair uncovered mass graves and evidence of severe malnutrition, triggering nationwide scrutiny of religious violence and the government’s failure to detect the group’s activities earlier.

Since the bodies were discovered three years ago, there have been calls for the government to impose tougher regulations on religious organisations. It also emerged that Mackenzie was arrested twice in the past, but then released.