Kenyan cult leader sentenced to 200 years in prison for starving 190 children

A cult leader who caused hundreds of people, including children, to starve to death in Kenya, Africa, was sentenced to 200 years in prison. It has been about three years since the crime was revealed.

According to Reuters, AP, and AFP on the 6th (local time), Mombasa High Court Judge Diana Kabedja Mochache sentenced Paul Ntenge Mackenzie, who was accused of murdering 191 people, including 190 children and one adult.

Mackenzie was arrested three years ago, in April 2023, in Malindi, a city on the eastern coast of Kenya, on charges of starving members of the Good News International Church, which he led, to mass starvation by forcing them to say, "If you want to meet Jesus, you must starve to death."

As the police searched the Shakahola Forest near the church, more than 400 bodies were unearthed by the following year, and this incident was called the 'Shakahola Forest Massacre' and shocked both inside and outside Kenya.

Mackenzie was charged with the murder of 191 people who had already been identified. He was accused of forcing parents who followed him to starve their children until they died. He was also indicted on additional charges related to the bodies of 52 additional people discovered in January of this year.

Prosecutors revealed that, as a result of the investigation, Mackenzie had established a so-called 'hierarchy of death' in which death occurred in that order, starting with children, followed by adolescents, women, and men. Most children died of starvation, but there were also cases where they died from suffocation or trauma.

Mackenzie and his accomplices denied the charges, but the court found all defendants guilty on the 19th of last month, saying the charges were proven and criminal responsibility was acknowledged.

Mackenzie, who founded his own church in 2003, was arrested in 2017 but found not guilty. He was arrested again in 2019 in connection with the deaths of two children, but was reportedly released on bail.