Verdict against cult leader in Kenya: murder in 191 cases

The affair shocked all of Kenya and the trial became a media event. On Monday, Paul Mackenzie, leader of the Christian sect Good News International, was found guilty of 191 counts of murder along with 28 co-defendants in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa. 190 of the murder victims are children.

Mackenzie's sect had systematically starved children to death for years in the Shakabola forest area near the town of Malindi. In this way they would come to Jesus, he told their parents. The former taxi driver founded his church in 2003 and had it officially registered in 2010. In 2019 it was moved to a farm in the forest and thrived there, isolated from the outside world and with its own militia.

The Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 seemed to confirm warnings of an impending doom for humanity. Anyone who followed the sect's promise of a guaranteed path to paradise had to hand over all their possessions, burn all their papers and completely isolate themselves from society. Mackenzie preached that only by imposing the most extreme constraints on yourself and, above all, on your own children while you are still alive can you guarantee them a good afterlife.

“Starvation became the way to heaven,” Judge Diana Mochache said at Monday’s sentencing, which lasted nine hours. “Parents watched their children die as a spiritual reward.” The parents themselves continued to eat. The children were supposed to be the first to go to paradise, then young people, women and men were supposed to starve one after the other until only Mackenzie's family was left, who would be the last to come, or so the promise was.

It didn't get that far. In March 2023, survivors who fled filed a complaint. At first nothing happened; it was only an argument with cult members at a market that finally led the police to the trail of the cult and its mass graves in the forest. The sect was closed, its leadership imprisoned in a terrorism wing, and 92 survivors were brought to safety. 429 bodies had been recovered by July, and murder charges were brought in 191 cases.

Numerous people who had managed to escape from the sect reported to the investigators. Over 120 witnesses testified in court. One was Paul Mackenzie's own son Dan Mackenzie, now 24 years old, who spoke about his experiences in the cult as a twelve-year-old. Once when he didn't want to go to church, he was stripped naked and beaten for three hours; Afterwards he had to fast for a week. He then fled and made a living as a motorcycle taxi driver in Malindi; He left five younger siblings behind - they are among those rescued.

Starvation was determined to be the cause of death in only 76 of the dead. Some died of thirst under plastic sheets. Individuals were beaten, strangled or suffocated, forensic experts found, justifying the expansion of the charge to include direct violence. Those convicted now face life imprisonment; the sentence will be pronounced on November 6th.

Why the sect was able to operate unmolested for years remains controversial. An investigation report by the Kenya Human Rights Commission from March 2024 indicates that Mackenzie was arrested as early as 2017 on charges of radicalization and child abduction. But he was released and carried on. When an escaped cult follower raised the alarm on social media in November 2022, she was reported for insults - nothing was done against Mackenzie.

How many lives the sect actually has on its conscience remains an open question. In addition to the 429 identified dead, the agency is preserving 443 unidentified bodies or remains for which no survivors have come forward. They will be buried in a mass grave in December.