Paul Mackenzie, the leader of a Kenyan doomsday sect, was convicted on Monday of murdering 191 people, of whom 190 were children, according to the BBC. Twenty-nine other leaders of his movement were found guilty of murder on the same day. All of the accused had denied the charges and maintained that no one was coerced into dying.
The verdict was delivered by Justice Diana Mochache in a ruling that ran for eight hours, the BBC reported. Mackenzie is scheduled to be sentenced on 6 November.
Why it matters
The case concerns the deaths of hundreds of followers who, prosecutors say, were told to starve themselves and their children in order to reach Jesus. It is the first time Mackenzie has received a verdict on murder charges, though he and other leaders of the group still face separate cases involving terrorism, radicalisation and keeping children out of school, according to the BBC.
The killings also raise questions about how a preacher who built a following through television sermons was able to draw families into a remote forest and keep the deaths hidden for years.
What the court heard
Justice Mochache said Mackenzie's adherents regarded him as the voice of Jesus, the BBC reported. One co-accused told the court that Mackenzie had instructed followers that anyone who refused to fast should be driven to heaven "through kicks and blows."
The court was told that burials in the forest were referred to as weddings, and that those who died were described as having been joined to Jesus. A witness said a pregnant woman was stopped from breastfeeding her newborn, who died twelve days later; the mother, the witness said, was told to fast until death so she could follow her children.
Mackenzie's former head of security, Enos Amanya Ngala, was originally among the accused but reached a plea agreement and testified for the prosecution, the BBC reported.
Inside Shakahola forest
In 2023, Kenyan authorities said more than 400 bodies had been recovered from shallow graves in Shakahola forest, near the coast, where Mackenzie had led followers from around the country.
Seventeen men from a nearby town were hired to exhume the graves, some of them paid about $8 a day, according to the BBC. One of them, James, told the broadcaster that each grave held at least three bodies and that some of the dead were infants only weeks old. He described finding twelve children laid in a single grave, arranged one on top of another. Other diggers said some of the children's remains had their limbs bound and were wrapped in bedsheets.
Another gravedigger, Salim Karisa, said he had sometimes driven people into the forest on his motorbike, but that the operation was organised so secretly that outsiders could not tell what was happening there. Some of those buried were known to local residents because cult members came into Shakahola town for supplies and to collect water from the River Galana.
A family's loss
Stephen Mwiti, 48, told the BBC that he lost all six of his children to the movement. When he went to confront Mackenzie, he said, he found him surrounded by women with shaved heads and many children. Mackenzie banned cosmetics and styled hair, instructing women to shave their heads or leave their hair untidy.
Mwiti's former wife was among those convicted alongside Mackenzie. He said he had recovered and buried only the remains of one child, his son Samuel. He traced the family's involvement to a television and cable box in his home in Malindi, a coastal town about 70km (43 miles) from the forest, through which Mackenzie's teaching reached them.
How the movement grew
Mackenzie founded Good News International Ministries in 2003. Over the following sixteen years the church expanded across Kenya and attracted thousands of followers, the BBC reported. It ran a television station, Times TV, which broadcast his sermons from a church in Malindi.
His end-times preaching included claims that education was evil, that medical care contradicted his doctrine and that digital identity cards were the mark of the devil. His son, Dan Paul Mackenzie, said he worked as a cameraman for the church and described congregations singing worship songs all morning before his father's sermons began at noon, some of them involving the casting out of demons.
The main church closed in 2019, and Mackenzie moved to Shakahola forest, urging his followers to join him.
Peter Shukrani, 23, told the BBC that his mother moved with him to the forest at that time. He had begun attending Mackenzie's church at the age of eight and called the pastor his spiritual father, saying he would never speak ill of him. While in the forest, Shukrani fell ill and his condition worsened because medicine was not permitted.
Mackenzie's sentencing is set for 6 November, with the outstanding cases against him and his co-accused still to be heard.
