Kenyan preacher Paul Nthenge Mackenzie has been sentenced to 200 years in prison for the murder of 191 people, including 190 children, in the infamous Shakahola Forest massacre.
The High Court in Mombasa handed down the sentence on Friday after finding him guilty of directing followers to starve themselves and their children to death in the belief that they would meet Jesus.
The twenty-eight other followers were also sentenced to prison terms ranging from to 160 years.
The case came to light in 2023 after hundreds of bodies were recovered in shallow graves at the cult’s base in Shakohola Forest, near Malindi, Kenya. More than 400 bodies were eventually recovered. Mackenzie’s lawyer and he would appeal the verdict. He also faces manslaughter and terrorism charges in other trials, which he denies.
Around 120 prosecution witnesses testified during the trial.
According to witnesses, the movement denounced formal education as “satanic”, viewed modern medicine and hospitals as instruments of the devil and required followers to cut themselves off from the outside world.
Mackenzie was arrested in April 2023 after a rights group alerted authorities and some followers were rescued from the 325-hectare (800-acre) ranch in Shakohola Forest on Kenya’s coast.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights put the death toll at 429 in 2024. Some victims remain unidentified.
The case has fuelled calls for tighter regulation of religious organizations, after it emerged that Mackenzie had previously been arrested twice but released. Mackenzie established the Good News International Church in 2003 and set up branches in Nairobi and along Kenya’s coast that attracted thousands of devotees, though he claimed it closed in 2019.
He was arrested in 2017 over charges of “radicalisation” but was acquitted. He was re-arrested in 2019 in relation to two child’s deaths at Shakohola but released on bail. I
Investigations have said Mackenzie was a taxi driver in the early 2000s, before he created the Good News International Ministry. Locals have said he quickly drew followers with fiery sermons at his church on the coast of Malindi, then from across Kenya with his online presence.
However, several surviving members of the group have told family members that what he preaches would often come true, citing as an example his prediction that “a great virus” would come, just before COVID 19 hit the country. As people struggled during the pandemic, financially and medically, Mackenzie preached about leaving the difficulties of life behind and “turning to salvation”.
-9News Nigeria.
