Kenyan doomsday preacher charged with 52 more deaths
A self-proclaimed preacher in Kenya linked to an infamous starvation cult that killed more than 400 people was charged yesterday over a further 52 deaths, prosecutors said.
In a case that made global headlines in 2023, hundreds of bodies were discovered just inland from the Kenyan beach resort of Malindi, in what became known as the “Shakahola Forest Massacre”, one of the world’s worst cult-related tragedies.
Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Mackenzie has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of manslaughter at his trial in Mombasa and has remained in custody.
But last year, more bodies were discovered in the remote village of Binzaro, around 30 kilometres from Shakahola along the Indian Ocean coast, suggesting the same cult had continued to operate even after Mackenzie’s arrest.
The public prosecutions office said in a statement on X that it had charged Mackenzie and others with “organised criminal activity, two counts of radicalisation (and) two counts of facilitating commission of a terrorist act” in relation to the “deaths of at least 52 people at Kwa Binzaro area in Chakama, Kilifi County.”
The defendants have again pleaded not guilty and the next hearing in the case is due on March 4.
“They are alleged to have promoted an extreme belief system by preaching against the authority of the government, adopted an extreme belief system against authority, and facilitated the commission of a terrorist act,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Efforts to regulate religion in the majority-Christian country have been fiercely opposed in the past as undermining constitutional guarantees of the division between Church and state.
Mackenzie and seven others are linked to a doomsday sect.
Prosecutors say Mackenzie and his Good News International Church organised a cult in which they ordered followers to starve themselves and their children to death to go to heaven before the world ended. Mackenzie has denied the accusations.
Investigators widened their focus to other suspected grave sites and by August 2025, 52 bodies had been recovered from shallow graves in and around Kwa Binzaro, which lies around 30 km (18 miles) from Shakahola.
Prosecutors say Mackenzie masterminded and oversaw the offences at Kwa Binzaro, continuing to direct them after his detention in 2023 and using methods that included radical teachings to draw victims to the remote site.
In late January, Kenya’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) said in a statement posted on social media platform X:
“Court heard that investigators recovered handwritten notes from (prison) cells occupied by Mackenzie, allegedly detailing (financial) transactions conducted through mobile phones.”
The charge sheet said the defendants faced counts including murder, participation in organised criminal activity under Kenya’s organised-crime law, and offences linked to radicalisation and the facilitation of terrorist acts under the country’s counter-terrorism framework.
The defendants all pleaded not guilty. *_-H-Metro_*
