Shakahola forest deaths: Paul Mackenzie’s son says siblings have been starved weeks earlier than Kenya trial

On Monday, Stephen Mwiti, 48, who mentioned he had misplaced all six of his youngsters to the cult, welcomed the decision.

“I am a cheerful man, that each one individuals have been convicted,” he advised the BBC exterior courtroom.

His former spouse was a type of convicted of homicide alongside Mackenzie.

Delivering her eight-hour judgment within the port metropolis of Mombasa, Justice Diana Mochache mentioned Mackenzie’s followers believed he was “Jesus’s mouthpiece”.

Certainly one of his co-accused advised the courtroom that Mackenzie had mentioned anybody who resisted fasting have to be pressured to go to heaven “by means of kicks and blows”.

Burials within the forest the place the cult was primarily based have been described as “weddings”, with those that died celebrated as having “wedded with Jesus”, the choose mentioned.

Mackenzie and different cult leaders additionally face separate circumstances involving terrorism, radicalisation and denying youngsters an training.

The homicide verdict is the primary ruling on essentially the most critical prices in opposition to the pastor, who was arrested in 2023 after greater than 400 our bodies have been found in shallow graves in Shakahola forest, close to Kenya’s coast.

He is because of be sentenced on 6 November.

Further reporting by Thomas Mukhwana