Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty as Sentencing Begins for Kenyan Cult Leader Paul Mackenzie

A court in Mombasa has begun sentencing proceedings for self-styled pastor Paul Mackenzie and 27 co-defendants following their conviction for the murder of 191 people in coastal Kenya. Prosecutors requested the death penalty for Mackenzie, citing the gravity of the offenses and an absence of remorse, while seeking life imprisonment for his associates. The October verdict held the group responsible for directing cult members to starve their children in the Shakahola forest to attain salvation, with all but one of the murder victims identified as children.

The formal sentencing follows an eight-hour judgment delivered last month by Justice Diana Mochache, who concluded that the deaths resulted from a deliberate and organised system of religious coercion. Court findings established that followers who attempted to abandon the deadly fasting regimen were subjected to fatal physical violence. Post-mortem examinations conducted on the exhumed remains confirmed starvation as the primary cause of death, alongside cases of suffocation, strangulation, and blunt force trauma.

Mackenzie and his co-accused entered formal pleas for mercy during the proceedings, having previously maintained their innocence and asserted that participants fasted voluntarily. Relatives of the victims, including Francis Wanje, who lost eight family members in the compound, urged the court to impose penalties proportional to the actions committed in the forest. Wanje had alerted law enforcement officials in March 2023 after retrieving a surviving grandchild from the site with the assistance of a former cult member.

The investigation began in early 2023 when authorities discovered shallow mass graves across the remote Shakahola property, eventually exhuming more than 400 bodies. Mackenzie founded the Good News International Ministries in 2003, building a regional following through broadcast television in Malindi that promoted doctrines rejecting modern healthcare, formal education, and state identification systems. He closed his public church in 2019 to establish the isolated forest commune where the deaths occurred.

Findings published by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights indicated that regional administration and law enforcement officers repeatedly ignored warnings regarding activities at the encampment. A presidential commission of inquiry initiated by President William Ruto was subsequently struck down by courts as unconstitutional. Mackenzie and other senior figures in the group still face additional pending state prosecutions, including charges of terrorism, radicalisation, and the denial of education to minors.

Written by Andreas Hofer andreas.hofer@alpineweekly.com