(The Turkish Post) – A Kenya cult leader and 30 of his followers were found guilty of 191 counts of murder on Oct. 19, 2026, over the starvation deaths of children and adults who had joined his movement in a forest on the country’s coast.
The High Court in Mombasa convicted Paul Mackenzie, the preacher behind the Shakahola deaths, and his co-defendants after a long trial. The verdicts are the first in a case that became the deadliest Kenya cult case in the country’s history.
Kenya cult leader found guilty of 191 murders
Justice Diana Kavedza held Mackenzie and the others responsible for the deaths of 190 children and one adult, all of whom starved. The court found that the defendants acted together to run a fasting regime that killed the victims. Prosecutors had charged them with murder under the penal code.
The Kenya cult leader founded the Good News International Ministries, a church he set up on the country’s coast. He told followers that they should fast to death to reach heaven before the end of the world, according to the case the state laid out in court.
A former taxi driver who turned to preaching, the Kenya cult leader had drawn the attention of the authorities before the Shakahola deaths over his sermons and his schools. He had been detained in earlier years in connection with his teaching of children, but kept his following and continued to lead it.
How the Shakahola massacre came to light
The deaths came to light in April 2023, when officers began searching Shakahola, a stretch of forest and scrubland in Kilifi County near the coastal town of Malindi. Investigators exhumed bodies from shallow graves over the following weeks. Officials have said more than 400 bodies were recovered, many of them children.
Post-mortem examinations found that most of the victims had starved, while some showed signs of strangulation, suffocation or injury, investigators said. Mackenzie was arrested in 2023 and has been held since.
Survivors and witnesses told investigators that the fasting was carried out in stages, with children made to go without food first, followed by women and then men. Some who tried to leave were stopped, witnesses said during the inquiry.
The scale of the discovery shocked Kenya, where churches and religious movements are woven into daily life. The government faced questions over how the deaths went unnoticed for so long and ordered a review of how religious organizations are registered and supervised.
Court rejects claim that followers chose to starve
Defense lawyers argued that adult followers had decided for themselves to fast and that the state could not hold the Kenya cult leader responsible for their choice. Kavedza rejected that argument for the children who died.
“The children did not therefore give free, informed and legally meaningful consent to fast to death,” the judge said. The court also held that religious justifications for the fast were not relevant to the question of intent.
The judge said the evidence showed the defendants had worked together to enforce the fast rather than leaving followers to act on their own.
Sentencing set for November
The court scheduled sentencing for Nov. 6, 2026. Murder can carry a death sentence or life imprisonment under Kenyan law, though judges have discretion over the penalty.
Mackenzie faces further proceedings in separate cases, including charges of terrorism, child cruelty and manslaughter tied to the same events, prosecutors have said. Those cases are being handled apart from the murder trial.
Families of the victims and former members who left the group before the deaths have waited more than three years for the first verdicts. Many of the bodies recovered from Shakahola have not been formally identified and remain in storage at a morgue in the coastal region.
