Kenyan cult leader sentenced to 200 years in prison for ‘murdering 191 people, including children’ (comprehensive)

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, AFP and local daily Kenya Times on the 6th (local time), Mombasa High Court Judge Diana Kabedza Mochache sentenced Paul Ntenge Mackenzie, who was accused of murdering 191 people, including 190 children and 1 adult.

The court sentenced Mackenzie to 100 years in prison for the murder of 183 people who starved to death and 100 years in prison for the direct murder of eight children, and ordered the two sentences to be carried out sequentially.

The court said that Mackenzie was primarily responsible for moving the believers to a remote area and ordering them to fast, and that he committed the crime based on cold and meticulous calculation.

In addition, 27 accomplices who were also indicted, including security guards who followed Mackenzie and forced believers to fast and people who helped cover up mass graves, were sentenced to up to 160 years in prison depending on their level of participation.

Some of the accomplices pleaded not guilty, citing the fact that they had lost their own children, but the court dismissed this as not changing the fact that they had participated in the murder of many other children.

Attorneys for Mackenzie and some of his accomplices said they would immediately appeal.

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.

Although the identities of all the dead have not been confirmed, Reuters reported that the total number of suspected deaths known so far is as high as 500.

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.

Suleiman Jiro, who lost his wife and six children in the incident, called for the death penalty, saying the sentence was not sufficient, AFP reported.

In fact, the prosecution sought the death penalty for Mackenzie, but the court said that if they viewed death as a means to go to heaven, the death penalty could be perceived as a form of victory or martyrdom, and would not have an appropriate deterrent effect on crime.

Although Kenya maintains the death penalty in law, it is a de facto abolitionist country with no executions since 1987.

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.

Ojiro Odhiambo, head of rapid response at the Kenya Human Rights Commission, said the conviction was an important step forward, but pointed out that local administration, police, intelligence officials and religious leaders who failed to respond to warning signs repeatedly raised at the time should also be held accountable, Reuters reported.