AFP – A Kenyan court on Tuesday indicted the leader of a famine cult and dozens of alleged accomplices for murdering around 200 children in a forest near the Indian Ocean.
Self-styled pastor Paul Ntenge McKenzie, who has already been charged with terrorism, manslaughter, child torture and cruelty, is accused of inciting hundreds of his followers to starve to death in order to “meet Jesus”. There is.
On Tuesday, McKenzie and 29 other suspects pleaded not guilty to 191 counts of murder, including those of three young children, according to court documents seen by AFP.
The 31st suspect was found not mentally fit to stand trial and was ordered to return to the Malindi High Court within a month.
The cult leader has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.
He was arrested in April last year after his body was found in the Shakahora forest, and the gruesome discovery sparked fear around the world.
Autopsies revealed that the majority of the 429 victims died of starvation.
But others, including children, appear to have been strangled, beaten or suffocated.
This incident, known as the Shakahora Forest Massacre, prompted the government to warn that it needed to strengthen its control over fringe groups.
Kenya, which has a Christian majority, has struggled to control unscrupulous churches and cults that engage in crime.
~ “Organized criminal group” ~
Court documents describe Good News International Ministries, which Mr. McKenzie founded, as “an organized criminal group that engaged in organized criminal activity that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of members.”
An indictment filed last month at the Tononoka Children’s Court in the port city of Mombasa said McKenzie and 38 other suspects “deliberately and purposefully” withheld food from children as young as six years old and others. The children were reportedly whipped with barbed sticks.
In addition to abuse and neglect, some children were also expelled from school and denied their right to an education, according to the indictment.
Questions have been raised about how Mr McKenzie was able to evade law enforcement despite his extremism and past legal history.
The Senate Investigative Committee reported in October that the father of seven was indicted in 2017 on charges of extremist preaching.
He was acquitted of radicalization charges in 2017 for providing schooling illegally after rejecting the formal education system, claiming it was contrary to the Bible.
In 2019, he was also charged in connection with the deaths of two children who were apparently starved, suffocated and buried in shallow graves at Shakahora. He was released on bail pending trial.
More than 4,000 churches are registered in the East African country of 53 million people, according to government statistics.
Previous efforts to regulate religious institutions in Kenya have been fiercely opposed as attempts to undermine constitutional guarantees of separation of church and state.
