2023-04-25 20:32:11
A pastor has been arrested by Kenya Police after dozens of bodies were found buried in a forest in shallow graves. The suspicion is that the religious guided these victims to an extreme fast that led them to die of hunger.
Authorities continue to recover bodies in an 800-acre (3.2 million square meter) forest. Until this Tuesday, the count had already surpassed 70 victims.
Kenya Police Inspector General Japhet Koome said the investigation had so far found that many of the victims were members of the Good News International Church, which is being described as a cult.
The leader of this sect, “Pastor” Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, was arrested in the city of Malindi. The case led the president of the country, the evangelical William Rutocomparing the situation to a case of “terrorism”.
“Terrorists use religion to promote their heinous acts,” he said, according to the newspaper. The New York Times.
Mackenzie was arrested on April 14 after authorities rescued more than 15 people from his property, four of whom were in critical condition and died shortly afterwards. He was indicted by the Malindi Court of Justice, which ordered his preventive detention for two weeks while the investigation is concluded.
“Recent findings are still ongoing,” said a Kenyan public prosecutor, speaking on condition of anonymity. “So until the police finish and declare that they have exhausted the land and declare that there are no more bodies, the matter will not go to court,” she added.
Complaint
The crimes came to light after a complaint from residents of the region indicated that there were people on Mackenzie’s property in extreme hunger.
“The information we received is that people were starving to death after being radicalized by a certain member of a church who told them that their work in this world was finished and that they should die and go see their maker,” said investigator Charles Kamau. .
“The smell is unbearable,” said Hussein Khalid, who runs a human rights organization, in an interview with BBC.
The death toll could be higher later, as the Red Cross said 112 people were reported missing. The police say that 29 survivors have been seen so far, but apparently not all of them want to be rescued, and some of them seem to be fully convinced about what “Pastor” Mackenzie told them about the end of the world.
One of the survivors of extreme fasting is a woman in her late 20s who refused help: “When we tried to give her first aid and glucose water, she didn’t agree. She closes her mouth and gives us a sign that she doesn’t want help,” Khalid said.
Another case is that of a 40-year-old man who was still able to speak when approached: “He said he didn’t need any saving and that he knew what he was doing and should be left alone. He even called us enemies who wanted to stop us from going to heaven,” concluded Khalid.
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