Get you up to speed: Leader of doomsday cult jailed for 200 years for murdering 190 children | News World
Paul Mackenzie, leader of the Good News International Church, was sentenced to 200 years in prison for the murders of 190 children and one adult, following the discovery of 448 bodies in mass graves in Shakahola Forest, Kenya. The court determined that the victims were instructed to starve themselves to death as part of a cult directive.
Mackenzie had been under scrutiny since 2017, culminating in authorities shutting down his church in Malindi in 2019 prior to his relocation to Shakahola Forest. In response to the situation, President William Ruto appointed a task force in May 2023 to evaluate the legal and regulatory framework governing religious organisations, although proposed reforms have yet to be enacted into law.
The Kenyan government has faced calls for enhanced regulation of religious organisations following the sentencing of Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison for his role in the Shakahola cult deaths, where over 400 bodies were found. President William Ruto appointed a task force in May 2023 to review the legal framework governing religious groups, though proposed measures have not yet been enacted.
What remains unclear — It is uncertain when the proposed legal and regulatory frameworks for tighter oversight of religious groups will be passed into law.
Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie sentenced to 200 years for 190 child murders
Paul Mackenzie ordered followers at the Good News International Church to starve themselves to death in Shakahola forest (Picture: Reuters)
The leader of a Kenyan doomsday cult linked to the deaths of more than 400 people has been given a 200-year sentence.
Paul Mackenzie, who led an apocalyptic Christian church in a forest near the Indian Ocean coast, told his followers to starve themselves to death, along with their children, to reach heaven before the end of the world.
He was convicted of the murders of 190 children and one adult alongside 28 of his followers.
They including guards who enforced his fasting directives and gravediggers who helped conceal the mass graves.
The case stems from the April 2023 discovery of mass graves eventually found to contain 448 bodies in Shakahola Forest, where cult members lived off grid in mud huts.
Mackenzie is also accused of ordering the deaths of 52 people found at a separate location in a village 20 miles away, bringing the suspected death toll to 500.
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He has pleaded not guilty in that case.
During the sentencing, Justice Diana Kavedza said that 183 victims died of starvation, defined as a complete lack of food, and the other eight were classified as murder by direct homicide.
She said the killings were ‘cold and calculated’ and dismissed claims by some of the accused that the loss of their own children altered the fact that they had participated in the killings of many other children.
Kenyan homicide detectives and forensic experts examine exhumed bodies from several shallow mass graves in the Shakahola forest (Picture: EPA)
The justice said that the perpetrators didn’t show remorse and declared they were ready to fast to death as well.
The scale of the killing is comparable to that of a doomsday cult that killed more than 700 people in Uganda in 2000, and the 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana when an American cult leader killed more than 900 people by ordering them to drink poison.
Mackenzie often smiled and chatted with his assistant pastor, Smart Mwakalama, who was sentenced to 160 years in prison.
The prosecution had argued for the death penalty for Mackenzie and life imprisonment for his accomplices.
Mackenzie is also facing terrorism, child abuse and torture charges in two other courts.
Stephen Mwiti, 48, father of six of Mackenzie’s child victims and husband of one of his convicted accomplices, said his wife had taken the children to Shakahola where they were starved to death.
‘I lost children and I will not be able to get them back no matter what happens to Mackenzie and his accomplices,’ he said.
‘I expect him to be sentenced to death or be jailed for life so that he never comes out to cause more deaths.’
Stephen Mwiti, who lost six children to the Shakahola starvation cult, at the grave of his son Samuel, the only one whose body was identified (Picture: Reuters)
Dan Mackenzie, one of Paul’s sons, said his father did not spare his own family.
‘I didn’t end up in Shakahola, because I didn’t believe any more about going to heaven. So I left the church and started doing my own thing,’ he told Reuters.
‘I lost friends too, and my younger brother. It’s justice to the people who we lost over there in Shakahola.’
Mackenzie had been on the radar of the authorities since 2017 when his premises were searched by police.
In 2019, authorities shut down Mackenzie’s church in Malindi and he relocated to the nearby Shakahola Forest.
The discoveries prompted calls for tighter oversight of religious groups.
President William Ruto appointed a task force in May 2023 to review the legal and regulatory framework, and separate government-backed and Senate proposals were published in 2024, though they have yet to be passed into law.
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