Kenyan court sentences cult leader Paul Mackenzie to 200 years for 191 murders

A Kenyan court has sentenced doomsday sect leader Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison for the murders of 191 people, including 190 children, in the Shakahola forest case. The sentence comprises 100 years for murder by starvation and another 100 years for direct homicide, according to The Guardian. BBC News reported that the two terms will run consecutively, while sentences within each category will run concurrently.

Mackenzie was convicted after prosecutors said he ordered followers of his Good News International church to starve themselves and their children so they could go to heaven or “meet Jesus”. Justice Diana Mochache said he bore primary criminal responsibility and described the killings as cold and calculated, according to the BBC. The judge declined to impose the death penalty, although she ruled that the case met the threshold for considering it.

She said capital punishment would remove any possibility of rehabilitation and disengagement. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty because of the scale and circumstances of the killings. Mackenzie was tried with 28 alleged accomplices, including guards who enforced fasting orders and gravediggers who helped conceal victims.

They received different prison terms of up to 160 years. Mackenzie and the other defendants had pleaded not guilty and argued that nobody had been forced to die. The court rejected that position.

The BBC reported that the judge found the deaths resulted from an organised system of religious instruction and directives compelling followers to fast. Some children were isolated and denied food while their parents watched. Others who resisted were beaten, according to evidence described in the judgment.

More than 400 bodies were recovered from shallow graves in Shakahola forest after Mackenzie’s arrest in 2023. The Guardian reported that many were severely decomposed and only 26 could be identified. The cases covered by last month’s judgment involved 191 deaths, while investigations into more than 200 others continue.

The deaths were mostly attributed to starvation, but post-mortem findings also recorded suffocation, strangulation and head injuries. Some causes could not be established because of decomposition. The bodies were found in graves and latrines, and some victims had been buried alive, according to The Guardian.

Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, established his ministry in 2003. Police had been aware of him since 2017, and authorities shut his church in 2019, after which he relocated to the forest, the reports say. He was arrested in 2023 after a tipoff and later faced separate manslaughter and terrorism charges, which he denies.

The Shakahola deaths have prompted scrutiny of state oversight. Kenya’s National Commission on Human Rights said local administrators and law-enforcement officials repeatedly failed to act, while the case has led to calls for stronger regulation of churches and other religious organisations. A presidential commission of inquiry was established but later declared unconstitutional.