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NAIROBI — As the leader of a cult whose members allegedly starved themselves to death at his behest appeared in court in Kenya, autopsies revealed that some of his victims may have been killed rather than have died of hunger.
Court documents seen Wednesday by The Washington Post indicate that prosecutors intend to charge preacher Paul Mackenzie with murder, aiding suicide, radicalization, genocide and crimes against humanity, along with cruelty to children, fraud and other crimes.
A mortuary attendant who is helping to perform the autopsies at the Malindi Sub-County Hospital said that nearly 50 of the 110 bodies recovered had been examined by Wednesday morning. About 20 of the bodies belonged to children age 12 or younger — half of whom had died of asphyxiation, he said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Government pathologist Johansen Oduor told reporters Wednesday evening that autopsies had been completed on 16 children and 19 adults. The majority died of starvation, he said, but four had been asphyxiated, seven bodies were decomposed beyond the point where a cause of death could be ascertained, and a child was found with a head injury. After examining other bodies Tuesday, he had said that at least two showed signs of asphyxiation.
On Tuesday, a court in Shanzu, near the port city of Mombasa, ordered the continued detention of Mackenzie, pending the police investigation.
His lawyer, Elisha Komora, said police are rushing to amass eence because he must be formally charged by Friday. Komora added that after Mackenzie’s earlier arrest last month, he had been released because the prosecution did not charge him in time.
“The burden of proof now lies with the prosecution to give eence that yes, indeed, what has been seen in Shakahola was done by him,” Komora said, adding that his client was in a good state of mind. “He was all laughing and talking to colleagues. He is in a good state of heath.”
In court documents, the prosecutors said survivor and witness testimony, backed up by the postmortems, shows that “some of the vulnerable adherents of the Good News International, mostly children (minors) and women (some elderly) were either coerced or violently forced to starve to death or asphyxiated to hasten their death.”
A Kenyan cult preached starving for salvation, police say. Dozens have died.
More than 460 people have been reported missing so far, according to the country’s Interior Ministry, raising the possibility there could be many more bodies in the forest.
The ministry added that bad weather had forced a halt to efforts to exhume bodies at the remote 800-acre site in a forest to the north of Mombasa. It said drones and helicopters were being used to search for any survivors.
“We would see a lot of children and women coming in and out of the forest,” said Emmanuel Kenga, 23, who was among a group of villagers in Shakahola who helped government investigation officers and pathologists exhume the bodies, in an interview Wednesday.
“Then we just stopped seeing them. Now it all makes sense, because when I am helping dig out these graves, there are so many children.” He said he witnessed women and children buried together, while older men were buried alone.
He and his father both tried to raise the alarm about the pastor’s activities, and he believes the deaths could have been prevented.
“The government had all the information,” Kenga said. “We did not know people were dying, but in January when we stopped seeing people, we started suspecting things were wrong.”
“We even at some point tried getting into the forest, but the preacher’s followers stopped us. They were violent and even burned some of our motorbikes in one instance. There were also families who would come here looking for loved ones; that means this information was out there,” he said.
Benson Mutimba traveled to Malindi to find his son who disappeared with the cult, and has given statements to the police and DNA samples. “A police person in charge of children told me that they had rescued 40 children from the forest. I am hoping that among the children, I can find my son.”
Kenya is mostly Christian, and has seen a rise in the popularity of evangelical preachers — and a handful of fringe groups denounced as cults — although mainstream churches remain the predominant Christian force.
Paul Gifford, an emeritus professor focusing on Christianity in Africa at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said that while new churches were “flourishing” in Kenya, this case appeared to be “very different.”
Bisset reported from London.
