A Kenyan court has sentenced self-styled pastor Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison for the murders of 190 children and one adult who starved to death on his orders in Shakahola Forest, in one of the worst mass killings linked to a religious group in modern times.
Justice Diana Kavedza, sitting at the High Court in Mombasa, imposed two consecutive 100-year terms on Friday — one for murder by starvation and one for direct homicide. Mackenzie, 53, was convicted on 19 October alongside 28 co-accused on 191 counts of murder. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, but Kenya has not carried out an execution since 1987.
The charges covered 183 counts of murder by starvation and eight counts of murder by direct homicide, for deaths that took place between January 2021 and September 2023. Prosecutors said Mackenzie, who led the Good News International Church, told his followers to starve themselves and their children to death to reach heaven before the end of the world. Accomplices threatened and beat victims to enforce the fast. The emaciated bodies were found in shallow graves and latrines, and some victims had been buried alive.
Twenty-six of Mackenzie’s co-accused were also handed long prison terms: 15 received 160 years each, 10 received 140 years each, and one received 100 years. Two others received 10-year terms, one of them after admitting all 191 murder counts under a plea-bargaining agreement. Mackenzie’s lawyer, Lawrence Obonyo, said he would appeal.
The case shocked Kenya in April 2023, when police began uncovering bodies in Shakahola Forest near the coastal town of Malindi. Although only 191 deaths were covered by this trial, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights says 448 bodies were ultimately found in the forest. Mackenzie is also accused of ordering the deaths of 52 people found at a separate location about 30 kilometres away, bringing the suspected total toll to 500. He has pleaded not guilty in that case.
The scale of the killing is comparable to that of a doomsday cult that killed more than 700 people in Uganda in 2000, and the 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana, when an American cult leader ordered more than 900 people to drink poison.
Stephen Mwiti, 48, lost six of his children at Shakahola. His wife, who took the children there, was among those convicted. “I lost children and I will not be able to get them back no matter what happens to Mackenzie and his accomplices,” he told Reuters before the sentencing. “I expect him to be sentenced to death or be jailed for life so that he never comes out to cause more deaths.”
Dan Mackenzie, one of Paul Mackenzie’s sons, said his father did not spare his own family. “I didn’t end up in Shakahola, because I didn’t believe anymore about going to heaven. So I left the church and started doing my own thing,” he told Reuters. “I lost friends too, and my younger brother. It’s justice to the people who we lost over there in Shakahola.”
Mackenzie had been on the authorities’ radar since 2017, when his premises were searched. In 2019, officials shut down his church in Malindi and he relocated to Shakahola Forest. The discoveries prompted calls for tighter oversight of religious groups: President William Ruto appointed a task force in May 2023 to review the legal and regulatory framework, and government-backed and Senate proposals were published in 2024, though they have yet to be passed into law. Ojiro Odhiambo of the Kenya Human Rights Commission said the conviction was an important step but that accountability should go further, as local administrators, police, intelligence officers and religious leaders had failed to act on repeated warning signs. In 2023, Mr Ruto said he took responsibility as president for the government having failed to prevent the deaths.
Sources: Reuters — “Kenyan cult leader sentenced to 200 years in prison for murder of 190 children” (https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/kenyan-court-sentences-cult-leader-200-years-prison-murder-190-children-2026-11-06/); Associated Press.
