Kenyan Cult Leader Mackenzie Sentenced to 200 Years for Murdering 191 People, 190 of Them Children
Mombasa — A Kenyan court on Friday, November 6, sentenced cult leader Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison for the murders of 191 people, 190 of them children and one an adult. Sentencing at the Mombasa High Court, Lady Justice Diana Kavedza said the term comprised 100 years for murders committed by starvation and a further 100 years for murders by direct homicide, the two to run consecutively.
Kavedza said she did not impose the death penalty because it could strengthen the convicts' belief that dying would reunite them with Jesus, rather than deter them. She ruled that Mackenzie bore primary criminal culpability for relocating his followers to a remote location and ordering them to fast to death; 183 of the 191 victims died of starvation. Mackenzie smiled several times during the sentencing and chatted with his assistant pastor beside him, who was sentenced to 160 years.
Mackenzie founded the Good News International Church. Preaching that the world would end in August 2023, he persuaded followers to abandon their homes and move to the Shakahola forest in Kilifi County, on Kenya's coast, to starve themselves in order to 'meet Jesus.' From April 2023, police exhumed hundreds of bodies from shallow graves in the forest; the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights counts 448 bodies in total, in a case that shocked the country.
On October 19, the court convicted Mackenzie and 28 co-defendants on all 191 murder counts; all 29 have 14 days to appeal. Mackenzie also faces separate terrorism and manslaughter charges relating to more than 200 further victims, as well as child abuse and torture charges in two other courts, all of which he denies. (Source: Reuters)
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Source: Reuters
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：肯尼亚蒙巴萨市地标象牙拱门（资料图）；马肯齐案在蒙巴萨高等法院宣判。照片：Mhussein5477，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The Mombasa Tusks landmark in Mombasa, Kenya (file photo); the Mackenzie case was sentenced at the Mombasa High Court. Photo by Mhussein5477, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- 2026-10-19Kenyan Court Finds Starvation Cult Leader Mackenzie and About 30 Others Guilty of Murder over Deaths of 190 Children and One Adult
- 2026-11-06Kenyan Cult Leader Mackenzie Sentenced to 200 Years for Murdering 191 People, 190 of Them ChildrenThis story
