MOMBASA — A court in Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa sentenced Paul Mackenzie, leader of the Good News International church, to 200 years in prison for the murder of 190 children and one adult. The sentence was delivered two weeks after the court found Mackenzie guilty of the crimes.
Mackenzie received 100 years for murder by starvation and an additional 100 years for direct homicide. Prosecutors said Mackenzie and his Christian doomsday sect instructed members to starve themselves and their families to death, promising entry into heaven before the world's end.
Accomplices used threats and beatings to ensure followers adhered to Mackenzie's orders. Authorities uncovered emaciated bodies in shallow graves and dumped in latrines within the Shakahola forest in southeastern Kenya. Some victims had been buried alive.
Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, was first arrested in 2023 following a police tip-off. Weeks after his initial arrest, authorities began systematically uncovering bodies in the Shakahola forest.
In total, more than 400 bodies have been recovered from the forest. Many were severely decomposed, with only 26 victims successfully identified. Mackenzie denied the murder charges, claiming he did not force the victims to starve, but the court rejected his defense.
Justice Diana Kavedza-Mochache, presiding over a hearing that lasted more than eight hours, said that in some instances, children were isolated and denied food while their parents watched.
Authorities had Mackenzie on their radar since 2017, when police first searched his premises. In 2019, the government shut down Mackenzie's church, prompting him to relocate operations to the Shakahola forest.
The plight of his followers became public in March 2023, when a man reported to police that his brother and wife had starved their children to death in the forest under Mackenzie's direction. Mackenzie was arrested but later released on bail.
Relatives of cult members said Mackenzie advanced the date he had told followers the world would end. Police subsequently rearrested him and began a more thorough search of the forest, leading to the mass grave exhumations.
The judgment delivered last month covered 191 deaths. Investigations into more than 200 other deaths remain ongoing.
The case has prompted calls for tougher oversight of churches and other religious organizations across Kenya, a nation where religious faith holds a prominent position in public life. Mackenzie forbade cult members from sending their children to school and from seeking hospital care, labeling such institutions as satanic.
Cult members lived in makeshift homes constructed from polythene sheeting and thatch. Mackenzie organized these dwellings into areas he named with biblical references such as Jerusalem and Judea.
