Kenyan sect leader Paul Mackenzie was sentenced to 200 years in prison for the deaths of 190 children and one adult. (Foto: Instagram)
Paul Mackenzie, a 53-year-old leader of an apocalyptic sect in Kenya, was sentenced Friday, Nov. 6, to 200 years in prison for the deaths of 190 children and one adult. The sentence includes 100 years for deaths caused by starvation and another 100 years for murder. Twenty-six other defendants received prison terms ranging from 100 to 160 years.
Investigators said Mackenzie directed followers to fast to death so they and their children could reach heaven before the end of the world. The alleged instructions were to begin with the children, and investigators said violence, confinement, and the withholding of food and water were used when people did not comply. Mackenzie denies forcing victims to die.
The sect also told members not to send their children to school, which it considered “satanic,” or take sick children to hospitals. It described modern medicine as “tools of the devil,” according to the account of the investigation.
Mackenzie was arrested in 2023 after a man reported that his brother had, at Mackenzie’s direction, allowed his children to die in Shakahola Forest. Investigators later found more than 400 bodies in shallow graves in the forest in southwestern Kenya. Only 26 bodies had been identified because of advanced decomposition.
Mackenzie registered the Good News International Church as a religious organization in 2020. The church was based in Furunzi, Malindi, and had about 35 branches across Kenya, but its activities took place in Shakahola Forest. Followers from different parts of the country also lived there. Prosecutors said members sold property, quit their jobs, withdrew their children from school, destroyed identification documents, and moved to the forest, where they lived in settlements described as biblical.
