The leader of a Kenyan doomsday sect has been sentenced to ۲۰۰ years in prison for the murders of ۱۹۰ children and one adult in one of the world’s worst cult disasters in recent history.
The sentence, comprised of ۱۰۰ years for murder by starvation and ۱۰۰ years by direct homicide, came two weeks after the court in Kenya’s coastal city of Mombasa found the cult leader guilty of the crimes.
Prosecutors said Paul Mackenzie and his Good News International church ran a Christian doomsday sect whose members were ordered to starve themselves and their children to death to go to heaven before the world ended.
His accomplices threatened and beat victims to ensure they followed his orders. The emaciated bodies were found scattered in shallow graves and dumped in latrines. Some had been buried alive.
Mackenzie was arrested in ۲۰۲۳ after police received a tipoff, and weeks later authorities began uncovering bodies in shallow graves in the Shakahola forest near the coast in south-eastern Kenya.
In total, more than ۴۰۰ bodies have been recovered. Many were severely decomposed and only ۲۶ could be identified.
Mackenzie denied murder charges, saying he did not force the victims to starve, but the court rejected that argument.
The Shakahola tragedy has gripped Kenya since the discovery of mass graves in the forest more than three years ago.
It raised questions about how Mackenzie was able to continue operating despite being on the radar of the authorities since ۲۰۱۷, when police searched his premises.
In ۲۰۱۹, authorities shut down Mackenzie’s church, and he relocated to the Shakahola forest, police said.
The case has also led to calls for tougher oversight of churches and other religious organisations in a country where religious faith plays a prominent role in public life.
Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, forbade cult members from sending their children to school and from going to hospital when they were ill, describing such institutions as satanic.
Cult members lived in makeshift homes of polythene sheeting and thatch that Mackenzie divided into areas with biblical names such as Jerusalem and Judea.
The plight of his followers began to emerge in March ۲۰۲۳, when a man told police his brother and wife had starved their children to death in the forest on Mackenzie’s orders.
Mackenzie was arrested but released on bail, after which relatives said he brought forward the date on which he told his followers the world would end. Police re-arrested him and started combing through the forest more systematically and began exhuming mass graves.
Last month’s judgment covered ۱۹۱ deaths while investigations into more than ۲۰۰ other deaths are continuing.
Justice Kavedza Mochache said in a hearing lasting more than eight hours that in some cases children were isolated and denied food while their parents watched.
Mackenzie faces other charges over the forest deaths, including those of terrorism, which he has denied.
Prosecutors said that, while he was in detention, he also directed the deaths of ۵۲ people in Kwa Binzaro village, about ۱۸ miles from Shakahola. Mackenzie has pleaded not guilty in that case.
Reuters contributed reporting
