Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie and his 29 associates have been arraigned on Tuesday with the murder of 191 children whose bodies were discovered among over double that number buried in a forest.
The defendants had all denied the charges brought before a court in the coastal town of Malindi. One of the suspect has been found mentally unfit to stand trial.
Prosecutors have accused Mackenzie of ordering his followers to starve themselves and their offspring to death so that they could go to heaven before the world ended. The event had been one of the world’s worst cult-related disasters recorded in recent history.
The followers of Mackenzie’s Good News International Church lived in several sequestered settlements in an 800-acre area within the Shakahola forest. Over 400 bodies were eventually exhumed.
Mackenzie was apprehended in April 2023 and has already been charged with terrorism-related crimes, murder and abuse.
He was also convicted in December 2023, of manufacturing and distributing films without a license and was subsequently sentenced to 12 months in jail.
A former taxi driver, Mackenzie had prohibited cult members from sending their children to school and from going to hospital when they were sick, tagging such institutions as Satanic, according to reports by some of his followers.
Mackenzie’s lawyer has however, said that his client is cooperating with the investigation into the deaths of the church members. The 30 defendants are scheduled to be back in court on March 7 for a bond hearing, according to the presiding judge.
