Kenya cult leader who told parents to starve children guilty of 191 murders
Source: BBC World ↗ (cross-verified by 2 outlets — full list below)
Self‑proclaimed pastor Paul Mackenzie was found guilty of 191 murder charges – all but one of the victims were children – after an eight‑hour trial in Mombasa’s court. The verdict, delivered by Justice Diana Mochache, concluded that Mackenzie, the leader of a Kenyan doomsday cult, ordered his followers to starve their children to death so they could “meet Jesus”, branding education “evil” and modern medicine “the devil”. Twenty‑eight other cult leaders were also convicted of murder, though they had pleaded not guilty and claimed no one was forced to die. Mackenzie’s former head of security, Enos Amanya Ngala, turned state witness after a plea deal, while Mackenzie and his co‑accused still face additional charges of terrorism, radicalisation and denying education to children. He is due to be sentenced on 6 November, having been arrested in 2023 following the discovery of more than 400 bodies in shallow graves in the Shakahola forest near the Kenyan coast.
The murders were part of a broader pattern of abuse and control that unfolded over 16 years after Mackenzie founded Good News International Ministries in 2003. His televised sermons on Times TV promoted conspiracy theories that condemned schooling, healthcare and digital identity cards as “evil” and “the mark of the devil”. After the main church shut down in 2019, Mackenzie relocated to the remote Shakahola forest, where he urged devotees to live in mud‑house settlements, fast for days, and reject medication. Survivors described how a pregnant woman was barred from nursing, leading to her infant’s death after 12 days, and how children as young as a few weeks were tied, wrapped in bedsheets and buried in mass graves. Gravediggers hired from nearby towns reported finding graves with three or more bodies each, some arranged in lines, and being paid as little as $8 a day for the grim work.
The fallout has reverberated through Kenyan society, with victims’ families confronting the scale of loss. Stephen Mwiti, 48, lost all six of his children in the forest and expressed relief that the perpetrators were convicted, holding a photograph of his family outside the courtroom. Gravediggers like James and Salim Karisa recounted the systematic secrecy that kept the killings hidden, noting that supplies were still fetched from the nearby town and that bodies were sometimes carried on motorbikes into the forest. The case has sparked national debate over the regulation of fringe religious groups, the protection of children, and the need for stronger oversight of charismatic leaders who promote anti‑education and anti‑medical doctrines. As the sentencing date approaches, Kenyan authorities face pressure to deliver justice that addresses both the murders and the broader network of radicalisation that enabled Mackenzie’s cult to thrive.
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The UK's central bank rate currently stands at 3.75%, so a global rates move like this could feed through to local borrowing costs. The UK's economy is growing at 0.8% with inflation at 3.2%, the backdrop this story's effects play out against locally. Housing-market effects like this are usually felt most where mortgage rates track the UK's own central bank rate closely. With the UK's unemployment at 5.6%, personal-finance effects like this land on a labour market that is currently fairly stable. Health-system effects are harder to localise from economic indicators alone — the real impact in the UK depends more on local healthcare capacity than the figures above.
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