Kenyan court convicts cult leader Paul Mackenzie and 28 others over 191 Shakahola deaths

A Kenyan court on Monday found the preacher Paul Mackenzie and 28 of his followers guilty of murder over the deaths of 191 people, almost all of them children, who starved in the Shakahola forest near Malindi.

Justice Diana Kavedza-Mochache of the High Court in Mombasa held that the prosecution had proved its case against all 29 accused. She dismissed their central defence. “I reject the defence by the accused persons that the victims, who were all below the age of 16, voluntarily fasted to death,” she said.

Mackenzie, who led the Good News International Church, had pleaded not guilty in 2024 to 191 counts of murder, as had his co-accused. Prosecutors described a “structured hierarchy of death” in which children were made to fast first, then teenagers, women and finally men, on the promise that they would meet Jesus. The defence argued that the case rested on “circumstantial evidence, hearsay accounts and inconclusive forensic findings.”

Sentencing is set for 6 November. Mackenzie still faces separate charges of terrorism and manslaughter, to which he has also pleaded not guilty, along with cases over child cruelty, torture and denial of education.

The case began in March 2023, when a man told police that relatives who had joined a new church had not come home. Searches uncovered hundreds of shallow graves, and 446 bodies were eventually exhumed. Only 34 of the 443 bodies and remains at the Malindi mortuary have been identified by DNA.

An ombudsman’s inquiry found that officials ignored warnings about Mackenzie between 2021 and 2023 and called the deaths preventable. A bill to tighten the regulation of religious groups, approved in draft by the Cabinet in July 2025, has stalled after objections from clergy.