Kenya cult deaths: Why police delayed Shakahola rescue

Francis Wanje reported the cult to Kenyan police in March 2023. He expected them to act immediately and rescue the people still trapped in Shakahola forest. “We expected at that time the police would take action immediately to go and rescue the other members there, but it didn’t happen,” he told the BBC’s Newsday programme. A relative in the police force and a former cult participant saved his grandson. The child showed officers the grave of his siblings. “It was [supposed to be] his last day.. they [would have killed] my grandson,” Wanje said.

On Friday, a Kenyan court answered part of that failure with a 200-year sentence. Justice Diana Mochache found Paul Mackenzie guilty of murdering 191 people, all but one of them children, after he instructed members of his cult to starve their children to death so they could “meet Jesus”. She ruled that he bore the “primary criminal culpability” for ordering his followers to fast to death. “The sentence is appropriate and just, to send an unmistakable message that such atrocities warrant the maximum penalties allowed by law,” she said.

The court handed down 100 years for homicide and another 100 years for offences related to starvation. The sentences within each category run concurrently, but the two sets run consecutively, bringing the total to 200 years. Twenty-eight accomplices were tried alongside him, among them guards who enforced the fasting orders and gravediggers who helped conceal victims’ bodies in mass graves. They received prison terms of up to 160 years.

For survivors and bereaved families, no verdict can fully settle what happened. Wanje, who lost eight relatives including two grandchildren in the forest, said before Friday’s hearing that he was “hoping for… a sentence which will match his [Mackenzie’s] deeds in the forest”. His account points to a failure that sits at the heart of the public interest in this case: the state did not move when it was warned.

The scale of what was missed became clear after Mackenzie’s arrest in 2023, when more than 400 bodies were exhumed from shallow graves in Shakahola forest near the Kenyan coast. The sprawling investigation shocked Kenya and drew international attention. Investigations by the state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) revealed that local administration and law enforcement officials had repeatedly turned a blind eye to the cult’s activities. President William Ruto set up a commission of inquiry in response, although it was later declared unconstitutional.

Justice Mochache described the killings as “cold and calculated”, saying the perpetrators had shown no remorse and had even declared their willingness to fast to death themselves. In her eight-hour judgement delivered last month, she said Mackenzie’s followers believed he was “Jesus’s mouthpiece”. Those who opposed his teachings were beaten to death. One co-accused said Mackenzie had told followers that anyone who “resisted the directive to fast must be forced to go to heaven through kicks and blows”. Burials inside the forest were called “weddings”, and those who died “were celebrated as having wedded with Jesus”, the judge said. She found the deaths arose from an organised system, including religious teachings and directives that compelled followers into the deadly fasting.

Post-mortem results showed starvation caused most of the deaths, while others died from suffocation, strangulation or head injuries. Some causes of death could not be determined because bodies had decomposed, and others died soon after rescue because they were so emaciated.

The case has shone a spotlight on the lack of oversight of rogue religious activities and on how such operations could carry on for so long. Mackenzie established Good News International Ministries in 2003, and over the next 16 years the church grew in popularity, drawing thousands of followers to branches across Kenya. It ran a television station, Times TV, which broadcast his sermons from his church in Malindi. His End Days sermons included conspiracy theories describing education as “evil”, healthcare as “against the doctrine” and digital identity cards as “the mark of the devil”. The main church shut down in 2019, and Mackenzie moved to Shakahola forest, encouraging devotees to follow him. He had previously been arrested and later released for lack of evidence.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, arguing that the scale and circumstances of the killings warranted the harshest punishment. Justice Mochache declined to impose it, despite ruling that the case met the threshold for its consideration. “Nevertheless, the court declines the invitation to impose the death penalty on any of the victims,” she said, adding that capital punishment would eliminate any prospect of rehabilitation and disengagement. The death sentence has not been carried out in Kenya since 1987. Mackenzie and the co-accused had asked the court for leniency; before their conviction on 19 October, they had all pleaded not guilty and repeatedly insisted that nobody was forced to die. Mackenzie also faces separate manslaughter and terrorism charges, which he denies.

Further detail on the case and its aftermath can be found in the BBC’s coverage at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm5yne5984l0o.

Meanwhile, the arithmetic of accountability remains stark. The convictions cover 191 victims, while more than 400 bodies were exhumed from the forest. For the citizens of Kenya, the verdict marks accountability for one man, but the deeper reckoning over the institutional failures that allowed the deaths to continue remains unfinished. Whether the state now acts on the warnings it ignored in 2023 is the question that will define whether Shakahola can happen again.