Self-proclaimed pastor and cult leader Paul Mackenzie has been sentenced to 200 years in prison for murdering 190 children and one adult.
The founder of the Good News International Church was sentenced Friday alongside 28 others at the Mombasa High Court.
Lady Justice Diana Kavedza sentenced Mackenzie to 200 years; 15 convicts were sentenced to 160 years imprisonment; 10 convicts were jailed for a term of 140 years; one accused was jailed to 100 years, and two (Enos Amanya and Lucas Owino) were each jailed for 10 years.
She also sentenced Enos Amanya Ngala to serve 10 years in jail after he entered a plea-bargaining agreement with the ODPP, where he pleaded guilty to all 191 counts of murder.
The court said that Mackenzie, leader of the Good News International Church, bore the “primary criminal culpability” for relocating his followers to a remote location and ordering them to fast to death to ‘meet Jesus’.
Delivering the sentence, Lady Justice Kavedza ruled that prosecution established death in all 191 counts, with starvation as the cause of death in 72 cases and additional deaths from asphyxia, manual neck compression, and traumatic head injury.
The court also found that in 110 cases, the cause of death was unascertained due to decomposition and the surrounding circumstances supported the inference that these victims also died from starvation under the fasting regime.
The court found that Mackenzie radicalised members of Good News International, with the teaching satisfying the definition of an extreme belief system.
On October 19, Lady Justice Diana Kavedza, said the prosecution had proved its case against all the 29 accused persons. Each was convicted on all 191 counts of murder. All denied the charges, except for one person who confessed and pleaded for leniency.
Thirty-one people were originally charged. Proceedings against two of them abated after they died during the trial. One of the 29, Enos Amanya Ngala, had pleaded guilty to all counts and was convicted on his own plea.
The self-styled pastor was arrested in 2023 after the discovery of more than 400 bodies in shallow graves in Shakahola Forest in Kilifi County.
The evidence established Mackenzie issued a directive requiring followers to fast to death, beginning with children, and that the directive was enforced through violence, confinement, and the withholding of food and water until unascertained death.
The court held that the pathologist could not determine the cause of death in 110 cases to decomposition or the surrounding circumstances of the fasting regime. The court also held that parental responsibility is a legal duty to protect the child’s life, health, and welfare, with no right of ownership.
A parent has no legal entitlement to determine that a child should die in pursuit of a religious belief. Where the evidence established that a parent knowingly subjected a child to the fatal fasting regime and maintained the conditions that prevented the child from obtaining nourishment or escaping, those acts and omissions could establish a direct causal connection with the child’s death.
The prosecution team was led by the DPP and comprised Peter Kiprop, Head of the Coast Region; Jami Yamina; Victor Owiti; Ngina Mutua; Betty Rubia; and Yassir Mohammed.
Additional reporting and photos by ODPP
