Chief Magistrate Alex Ithuku has ordered Paul Mackenzie, the leader of a doomsday starvation cult, and 94 followers to undergo emergency medical examination due to their frailty.
The court, situated in Mombasa, addressed the 238 manslaughter charges against Mackenzie, his wife Rhoda Maweu, and others, who pleaded not guilty after a visibly weakened appearance. The cult is accused of causing the deaths of 429 members, believed to have starved in anticipation of meeting Jesus Christ before the world’s end.
This took place between January 2021 and September 2023 at the Shakahola area in Malindi Sub-County within Kilifi County, according to prosecutors.
Ithuku, who visited the suspects in the basement cells of the court, said afterwards that he observed some could barely stand or open their eyes, so he was calling for them to be treated immediately.
Earlier this month, Mackenzie and 94 of his followers were charged with murdering 191 children, of whom only 11 have been identified, according to the prosecution charge sheet.
The bodies were discovered in dozens of shallow graves on an 800-acre (320-hectare) ranch in a remote area known as Shakahola Forest in the coastal county of Kilifi. The graves were found after police rescued 15 emaciated church members who told investigators that Mackenzie had allegedly instructed them to fast to death before the world ends. Four of the 15 died after they were taken to a hospital.
Autopsies on some of the bodies found in the graves showed they died from starvation, strangulation or suffocation.
Kenya’s chief government pathologist Dr. Johansen Oduor said last week the government will resume the search for and recovery of more bodies from the Shakahola Forest from March.
The exercise had been halted so that autopsies and DNA analysis could be done on the 429 bodies already recovered, Oduor said.
