NAIROBI, Kenya Feb 12 – Paul Mackenzie, a self-proclaimed relugious preacher and seven others linked to an infamous doomsday cult have been charged over the deaths of dozens of people whose bodies were discovered in shallow graves in southeast Kenya last year.
Director of Public Prosecutions said in a statement on X on Wednesday that it had charged Mackenzie and other defendants with “organized criminal activity, two counts of radicalization (and) two counts of facilitating commission of a terrorist act” in relation to the “deaths of at least 52 people at Kwa Binzaro area in Chakama, Kilifi County
The defendants pleaded not guilty, with the next hearing in the case due on March 4.
“They are alleged to have promoted an extreme belief system by preaching against the authority of the government, adopted an extreme belief system against authority, and facilitated the commission of a terrorist act,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Mackenzie and others were already facing charges including murder and “terrorism” in connection with the deaths of people whose bodies were exhumed earlier from Shakahola Forest, in one of the world’s biggest cult-related disasters in recent history.
Prosecutors say Mackenzie and his Good News International Church organised a cult in which they ordered followers to starve themselves and their children to death to go to heaven before the world ended. Mackenzie has denied the accusations.
By 2025, two years after investigations began, prosecutors said more than 400 bodies had been recovered from Shakahola Forest, which is located in Kilifi County on Kenya’s east coast.
