Kenyan authorities have designated the Good News International Church, led by Paul Mackenzie, an organized criminal group, following the religious leader’s instructions for followers to starve themselves and their children to death in a quest for heaven.
Mackenzie is currently facing charges of murder, child torture, and terrorism after hundreds of bodies were discovered last April in the Shakahola forest near Kenya’s coast.
Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki’s declaration in the official gazette on Wednesday allows for further investigation and potential prosecution of members who assisted Mackenzie.
The gruesome discovery of over 400 bodies across extensive exhumations in the forest marks one of the world’s most devastating cult-related tragedies in recent history.
Prosecutors plan to charge a total of 95 individuals with offenses such as murder, manslaughter, terrorism, and torture, attributing delays to the challenges of locating and exhuming the remains and conducting autopsies.
Some of Mackenzie’s followers were rescued in emaciated conditions from the forest.
Insiders revealed that Mackenzie orchestrated the mass starvation in three phases, targeting children first, followed by women and young men, and finally the remaining men.
As a former taxi driver in Mombasa, he prohibited cult members from sending their children to school and seeking medical care, condemning such institutions as satanic.
In December, Mackenzie received a 12-month sentence for producing and distributing films without approval from the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB).
Source-Aljazeera
