A Mombasa court will deliver a long-awaited verdict on Monday in the trial of a self-proclaimed Kenyan preacher and his associates, accused of murdering 191 people, mostly children, in an infamous starvation cult.
In the three years since the grisly discovery, more bodies of children, women and men have been unearthed in the surrounding area, bringing the total to well over 400. Mackenzie was arrested in April 2023, after some followers were rescued when a rights group tipped off the authorities. The subsequent police operation exposed hundreds of shallow mass graves, the soaring death toll requiring a pause in excavations as local morgues ran out of space.
Mackenzie is alleged to have incited his acolytes to starve to death in order to “meet Jesus”. The prosecution alleges that Mackenzie “initiated and directed” the extreme fasting, claiming there was a “structured hierarchy of death” which saw children first, then teens, women, and then men. The prosecution says the children “died from starvation, features consistent with starvation, asphyxia, neck compression and traumatic head injury”, drawing on evidence from post-mortems and police. He was arrested in 2017 over charges of “radicalisation”, acquitted, and then again in 2019 in Shakahola, after the deaths of two children from starvation.
