Kenyan Cult Leader Paul Mackenzie Sentenced to 200 Years for 191 Murders

A Kenyan court has sentenced cult leader Paul Mackenzie to 200 years behind bars over the murders of 191 people, nearly all of them children. The court in Mombasa handed down the sentence on Friday. As a result, the case marks a major step in one of the deadliest cult cases in modern history.

The same court convicted the self-styled pastor last month, alongside 28 co-accused. The court found that they told followers to starve both themselves and their children so that they could “meet Jesus”. Of the 191 victims in the case, 190 were children and one was an adult.

Paul Mackenzie sentenced: how 200 years add up

Justice Diana Kavedza imposed 100 years for the homicide offences and another 100 years for crimes linked to starvation. The sentences within each group will run at the same time. However, the two groups will run one after the other, which brings the total to 200 years, the BBC reported.

The judge ruled that the “primary criminal culpability” for the deaths lay with Mackenzie. “The sentence is appropriate and just, to send an unmistakable message that such atrocities warrant the maximum penalties allowed by law,” she said.

Meanwhile, the 28 co-accused received various prison terms of up to 160 years. They included guards who enforced the fasting orders and men who helped bury the bodies, according to the BBC.

Death penalty request rejected

At the hearing, prosecutors had asked for the death penalty. They argued that the scale of the killings demanded the harshest possible punishment.

The judge agreed that the case met the legal threshold for a death sentence. Nevertheless, she declined to impose it. She said capital punishment would remove any chance of rehabilitation. Kenya has not carried out an execution since 1987.

Mackenzie and his co-accused had asked the court for leniency. Before their conviction on 19 October, they all pleaded not guilty. They insisted that nobody was forced to die.

What happened in Shakahola forest

Originally, Mackenzie founded Good News International Ministries in 2003. His sermons attacked education and healthcare, and they branded national digital ID cards “the mark of the devil”, according to the BBC. After his main church closed in 2019, he moved to Shakahola forest near Kenya’s coast and urged his followers to join him.

Eventually, police arrested him in 2023 after a tip-off. In the following weeks, investigators began finding bodies in shallow graves across the forest. In total, investigators exhumed more than 400 bodies, Kenyan authorities said.

Later, post-mortem results showed that most victims died of starvation. Other victims died of suffocation, strangling or blows to the head, the judge found. Followers who resisted the fasting orders were beaten, she said.

For comparison, Al Jazeera likened the scale of the tragedy to the 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana. It also recalled the deaths of over 700 members of a Ugandan doomsday sect in 2000.

Families seek wider justice

For relatives, the sentence brings some relief. Francis Wanje lost eight relatives, including two grandchildren, in the forest. Before the hearing, he told the BBC he hoped for a sentence that would match Mackenzie’s deeds.

Wanje reported the case to police in March 2023. Yet he said officers did not act quickly to rescue other members. Later, Kenya’s state-funded human rights commission (KNCHR) found that local officials and police had repeatedly ignored the cult’s activities.

Police had also arrested Mackenzie twice in the past and then released him, Al Jazeera reported. As a result, the case has sparked calls for tighter oversight of religious groups in Kenya.

More cases still ahead

The verdict does not close the Shakahola file. The convictions cover 191 victims, yet investigators recovered over 400 bodies. In addition, Mackenzie faces separate charges of manslaughter and terrorism, which he denies.

In the coming months, attention will turn to any appeals and to the remaining trials. For many families, those cases will decide whether every victim of Shakahola receives justice.