NAIROBI, Kenya May 8 – After Kenyan authorities uncovered mass graves linked to a religious cult whose members starved to death, a photo showing three emaciated men was shared on social media with claims that it showed surviving members of the sect. But this is false: the images show suspected cattle rustlers recently released from a detention facility in Uganda.
“Pastor Paul Mackenzie, the head of the Malindi cult, has effectively persuaded our people to forgo what is considered regular life, education, or the pursuit of pleasure for this?”, reads a tweet featuring the image published on April 24, 2023.
Screenshot showing the false tweet, taken on May 3, 2023
The photo, showing three emaciated bare-chested men wearing shorts, was also shared on Facebook.
Cult deaths
Kenyan investigators exhumed more than 100 bodies (archived here) from shallow mass graves in the Shakahola forest outside the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi while investigating a cult whose followers are believed to have starved themselves to death.
Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, the man who reportedly told his followers to starve themselves in order to “meet Jesus”, was arrested on April 14 in connection with the deaths.
According to local authorities, autopsies carried out on about 40 bodies found that starvation appeared to be the main cause of death (archived here). But some victims were strangled, beaten or suffocated.
Court documents seen by AFP show that prosecutors plan to charge Mackenzie with terrorism, murder, cruelty towards children and kidnapping, among other crimes.
But the image shared in the posts does not show followers of Mackenzie.
Photo from Uganda
Using a reverse image search, AFP Fact Check found that the picture is from Uganda.
Local Ugandan media reported (archived here) on the incident in April 2023 and Uganda-based journalist Richard Oyel told AFP Fact Check that “the photo shows Karamoja youth who were recently released from a detention facility in the country”.
The youth were detained over alleged cattle rustling, a major issue (archived here) in the country’s northeastern Karamoja region. The people of Karamoja are predominantly pastoralists and some of them have historically engaged in livestock raiding.
The image was shared on social media in Uganda on April 7, a week before the Kenyan cult story broke out.
Uganda’s Daily Monitor also published an article on April 12 with a photo showing more than a dozen of the suspected cattle rustlers (archived here). One of them wears the same shorts — blue with yellow designs — as seen in the image used in the false posts, where the mens’ backs are turned to the camera.
The article reported that the group of men, detained by the Ugandan authorities, were ill and emaciated upon release.
