Kenyan cult leader convicted of murder as his son describes child starvation
A Kenyan court has found pastor Mackenzie and co-accused guilty of murder over the Shakahola forest deaths. His son Dan says he was forced to fast as a child and hopes the verdict will comfort victims' families.
A court in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa has convicted cult leader Mackenzie, a pastor, and several co-accused of murder. It is the first ruling on the most serious charges in a case centred on Shakahola forest near Kenya's coast, where more than 400 bodies were found in shallow graves in 2023, the year the pastor was arrested. He is due to be sentenced on 6 November.
The judge's findings
Justice Diana Mochache took eight hours to deliver her judgment. She said Mackenzie's followers believed he was "Jesus's mouthpiece". One co-accused told the court that Mackenzie had said anyone who resisted fasting must be forced to go to heaven "through kicks and blows". Burials in the forest were described as "weddings", and those who died were celebrated as having "wedded with Jesus", the judge said.
Mackenzie and other cult leaders also face separate cases involving terrorism, radicalisation and denying children an education.
A son's account
Mackenzie's son Dan Mackenzie initially defended his father. He says he first struggled to understand the allegations but came to grasp the scale of the tragedy during the trial. He recalls being forced to fast for almost a week at the age of 12, and church members beating him for hours as a child to make him attend a service. The cult's doctrine held that education was forbidden and modern medicine was "evil"; Dan left school at seven.
He says he felt he had to report relatives who still believe in the teachings, including his grandmother, in order to free his siblings. Dan now lives in the coastal town of Malindi, where he works as a motorcycle taxi driver and supports himself and his younger siblings. Some locals were angry with him over his father's crimes, he says, while others accepted him because he had distanced himself from that life.
Stephen Mwiti, 48, who lost all six of his children to the cult, welcomed the verdict outside court. His former wife was among those convicted of murder alongside Mackenzie.
