Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie found guilty of 191 murders
A court in Mombasa convicted the doomsday pastor, who told followers to starve their children to "meet Jesus", together with 28 other cult leaders; he will be sentenced on 6 November.
Paul Mackenzie, the leader of a Kenyan doomsday cult, has been found guilty of murdering 191 people, all but one of them children. Prosecutors said he ordered members of his group to starve their children to death so that they could "meet Jesus"; his teaching banned education and described modern medicine as "evil". Twenty-eight other leaders of the cult were also convicted of murder. All had pleaded not guilty, insisting that no one had been forced to die.
Delivering an eight-hour judgment in the port city of Mombasa, Justice Diana Mochache said Mackenzie's followers believed he was "Jesus's mouthpiece". One co-accused testified that those who resisted the order to fast were to be "forced to go to heaven through kicks and blows". Burials in the forest where the group lived were called "weddings", and the dead were celebrated as having "wedded with Jesus". One witness described how a pregnant woman was prevented from feeding her newborn baby, who died 12 days later. Mackenzie's former head of security, Enos Amanya Ngala, took a plea deal and testified for the prosecution.
Mackenzie was arrested in 2023 after more than 400 bodies were found in shallow graves in Shakahola forest, near the Kenyan coast, where he had gathered followers from across the country. He still faces other cases, including charges of terrorism, radicalisation and denying children an education, but this is the first verdict on the most serious charges. Stephen Mwiti, 48, who lost all six of his children to the cult, saw his former wife convicted alongside Mackenzie. Sentencing is set for 6 November. Source: BBC News (with The Guardian, DW)