Starvation cult behind 400 deaths killing again despite leader’s arrest, police fear
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A starvation cult accused of being responsible for the deaths of over 400 people is still active, officials fear, as new graves suggest acolytes escaped a police round-up two years ago.
Kenyan police have uncovered the bodies of dozens of new suspected victims in recent days, including some seemingly buried long after officers claimed to have smashed Pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge’s fringe sect.
Officials have now told the Telegraph they believe some of his followers escaped the crackdown and continued to operate nearby, potentially prolonging one of the worst cult-related mass deaths ever recorded.
Police have exhumed 37 more bodies from a site in Kwa Binzaro, about 12 miles south of Shakahola Forest, near Mombasa, where Mackenzie ran his Good News International church.
The breakaway group is thought to consist of those who fled police raids in early 2023, and also brainwashed members who have been unable to escape its extremist teachings.
Some vulnerable members are thought to have fallen back under its spell after they were initially rescued.
Josphat Biwott, Kilifi county commissioner, told the Telegraph: “This is the very same sect.
“We suspect so because some of the people we have arrested at Kwa Binzaro are the same people we rescued from Shakahola two years ago.”
He said: “We have arrested 11 suspects so far. Investigations indicate the leader of the current group at Kwa Binzaro is a woman.”
The revelation that cult followers appeared to have continued operations only miles away will put the original Kenyan police investigation under intense scrutiny.
Police found hundreds of bodies in shallow graves in Shakahola in 2023 and more than 400 of the sect’s followers are alleged to have died.
Mackenzie has been accused of encouraging followers to starve themselves to death to achieve redemption and to meet Jesus.
He has been in custody since May 2023 and last month went on trial along with 28 others for 191 counts of murder.
Mackenzie, his wife and 91 other defendants face a separate trial for the manslaughter of 238 people.
All have denied the charges.
Dr Robert Njoroge, the pathologist in charge of the Kwa Binzaro exhumations, said some of the new suspected victims’ remains had been reduced to skeletons, suggesting they had been buried longer than a year.
Others had only partially decomposed and appeared to have been buried a matter of “a few months”.
In the aftermath of the 2023 police raids, locals described a chaotic police attempt to roll up the church. Some members simply fled deeper into the forest and were not pursued.
One attempt to gauge the scale of the cult in 2023 estimated some 1,200 people from across Kenya were missing.
The Kenyan state has already faced questions over how it allowed the church to operate, despite years of warning signs, large numbers of complaints and several police investigations.
Content retrieved from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/starvation-cult-behind-400-deaths-killing-again-in-kenya/.
