Kenyan doomsday cult leader, Paul Mackenzie, has been found guilty of murdering 191 people, most of them children, after ordering his followers to starve themselves and their children to death to “meet Jesus”.
Twenty-nine other leaders of the cult were also convicted of murder. They had pleaded not guilty, insisting that nobody was forced to die.
Delivering an eight-hour judgment, Justice Diana Mochache said Mackenzie’s followers believed he was “Jesus’s mouthpiece”.
One of his co-accused said Mackenzie had instructed followers who resisted fasting to be forced to heaven “through kicks and blows”.
The judge said burials in the forest where the cult was based were referred to as “weddings”, with those who died celebrated as having “wedded with Jesus”.
A witness told the court that a pregnant woman had been prevented from nursing her newborn baby, who died 12 days later.
“She was instructed to fast to death and follow her children,” the witness said.
Mackenzie is scheduled to be sentenced on November 6. He and other cult leaders also face separate legal cases involving terrorism, radicalisation and denying children access to education.
The murder verdict is the first ruling on the most serious charges against the pastor.
In 2023, Kenyan authorities said more than 400 bodies had been recovered from shallow graves in Shakahola Forest, near the country’s coast, where Mackenzie led followers from across Kenya.
Seventeen men were hired from a nearby town to exhume the bodies, with some reportedly paid $8 a day.
“Every grave we found had at least three bodies,” James, one of the gravediggers, told the BBC.
“Some of the remains were of children as young as a few weeks old.”
He said workers once found 12 children buried in a single grave, with their bodies arranged on top of one another.
The gravediggers also described finding children whose hands and legs had been tied and whose bodies were wrapped in bedsheets.
Although many of Mackenzie’s followers came from other parts of Kenya, some victims were known to residents of nearby Shakahola town, where cult members went to buy supplies and collect water from the River Galana.
“We would sometimes carry people on our motorbikes into the forest,” another gravedigger, Salim Karisa, said.
“But it was so planned and secretive that nobody could tell what was happening inside.”
Stephen Mwiti, 48, said he lost all six of his children to the cult. His former wife was among those convicted alongside Mackenzie.
“If I met Pastor Mackenzie today, one of us will have to die,” he told the BBC.
“All six of my children died in Shakahola forest,” Mwiti said, holding a photograph of his family.
He said he had only recovered and buried the remains of his son, Samuel.
Mwiti blamed a television set and cable box in his home in the coastal town of Malindi, about 70 kilometres from Shakahola, for introducing Mackenzie’s teachings to his family.
The pastor founded Good News International Ministries in 2003, and the church attracted thousands of followers through its branches across Kenya over the following 16 years.
The church operated a television station, Times TV, which broadcast Mackenzie’s sermons from Malindi.
His end-times teachings included conspiracy theories describing education as “evil”, healthcare as contrary to religious doctrine and digital identity cards as “the mark of the devil”.
Mackenzie’s son, Dan Paul Mackenzie, said he worked as a cameraman 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 pastor delivered sermons from noon, some of which involved what he described as casting out demons.
The church’s main branch closed in 2019, after which Mackenzie moved to Shakahola Forest and encouraged his followers to join him.
Peter Shukrani, 23, said his mother relocated to the forest with him. He had attended Mackenzie’s church since he was eight and described the pastor as his “spiritual father”.
Shukrani said he fell ill in the forest but could not access medication because it was prohibited.
“My mother would throw away all the medicine I was supposed to take because she believe that only God could heal me,” he said.
He described the settlement as a collection of mud houses scattered across the forest, where residents fasted for days before eating small meals.
By March 2023, when local herders first discovered human remains, hundreds of people had died.
“We would carry someone out of the forest but they were so frail that they would die in our arms,” Karisa said.
Shukrani was among those rescued from the forest that month. He had been bedridden for weeks, and his condition deteriorated because his mother discarded the medication he needed.
“My mother believed Pastor Mackenzie’s doctrine that medicine was evil,” he said.
“I would have died if I wasn’t rescued from Shakahola forest.”
Many of the recovered bodies remain unidentified because of advanced decomposition. Court documents refer to some victims as “unknown male child”, identifying them by the location of their graves and the dates they were discovered.
Despite the deaths and suffering associated with the cult, Shukrani continued to defend Mackenzie before the verdict.
“Mackenzie didn’t force anyone to fast. People made those choices by themselves because of their beliefs,” he said.
“I still love him and he is still my pastor.”
Dan Mackenzie, however, said his father should be found guilty, describing him as the leader responsible for the mass deaths.
“He was the leader; he was someone who they were looking [up to]. So, he is a murderer of mass killing,” he said.
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