KENYAN COURT SENTENCES PAUL MACKENZIE TO 200 YEARS FOR MURDER

A Kenyan court sentenced Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison on Friday for murdering 190 children and one adult. Justice Diana Kavedza imposed 100 years for 183 counts of murder by starvation and another 100 years for eight counts of direct homicide. The court in Mombasa convicted Mackenzie in October and rejected his defence that he had not forced followers to starve. Kavedza also handed prison terms to 28 accomplices, including Mackenzie’s assistant pastor, Smart Mwakalama, who received 160 years.

Mackenzie’s Good News International Church operated from 2003 in the coastal town of Malindi. The court found that he ordered followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could reach heaven before the world ended and “meet Jesus”. Accomplices enforced his instructions through threats and beatings, while gravediggers helped conceal bodies in shallow graves. Police arrested Mackenzie in 2023 following a tip-off, and authorities began uncovering bodies in Shakahola Forest several weeks later.

Kenyan authorities put the wider death toll at more than 400, beyond the 191 deaths covered by Mackenzie’s murder convictions. Relatives reburied more than 60 victims following identification, while decomposition prevented identification of many other remains. Kavedza rejected arguments from some defendants that losing their own children changed the nature of their involvement in other deaths. All but one of the accomplices denied the charges; one pleaded guilty and sought leniency. Kenyan law permitted a death sentence in Mackenzie’s case, but the country has carried out no executions since 1987.