2023-05-09 15:09:29
Time.news – Horror in Kenya. Autopsies on corpses found in mass graves related to a religious cult revealed that the bodies were missing some organs raising the suspicion that they were ripped out after the deaths. For this reason, reports the Guardian, investigators have decided to carry out a new series of exhumations. Not even the track of the organ trafficking.
The macabre discovery dates back to last month: mass graves were found near the coastal city of Malindi, on the Indian Ocean, thus shocking the country with a Christian majority, deeply religious, in what has been called the “massacre of the Shakahola forest”. .
Police believe most of the bodies belong to followers of the self-styled pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzieaccused of having ordered them to starve “to meet Jesus”.
While starvation appears to be the leading cause of death, the government’s chief pathologist, Dr Johansen Oduor said some of the victims – including children – have been strangled, beaten or suffocated.
“Autopsy reports have established organ shortages in some of the victims’ bodies that were exhumed,” he said. Chief Inspector Martin Munene in a statement filed in a Nairobi court.
The trade in human organs is “believed to have been well coordinated involving different actors,” he said, without giving details of the alleged trafficking.
However, Munene stressed that Ezekiel Odero, a televangelist arrested last month in connection with the same case and granted bail, has received “huge cash transactions,” allegedly from Mackenzie followers who sold their properties on order of the cult leader.
The Nairobi court ordered the authorities to freeze for 30 days more than 20 bank accounts belonging to Odero.
So far, 112 deaths have been confirmed, he said Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki, after arriving in Malindi to supervise the resumption of exhumations. “Search and rescue efforts of people suspected of holed up in the thickets and bushes continued,” he added.
Mackenzie turned himself in on April 14 after police, following a tip-off, entered Shakahola Forest for the first time, where 30 mass graves were found. The prosecutors have asked to detain him for another 90 days until the investigation is completed and the magistrate Yusuf Shikanda will rule on the request next Wednesday.
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