A Kenyan cult preached starving for salvation, police say. Dozens have died.

NAIROBI - Kenyan authorities have exhumed dozens of bodies, mostly children, from a forest in southeast Kenya in what appears to be a religious starvation cult, with Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki describing it as a “massacre.”

More than 70 people have been confirmed dead, a local police chief told the Associated Press. Charles Kamau, a criminal investigation officer from the Malindi area, said most of the bodies retrieved from graves were children.

Kamau added that at least four had died of starvation, though post-mortems still had to be done. The dead are believed to be worshipers of Paul Mackenzie’s Good News International Church.

Eight hundred acres of the Shakahola forest have been sealed off and declared a crime scene, Kindiki said. The site is close to Malindi, a town of 120,000 people about 72 miles north of Mombasa. “Prima facie, large-scale crimes under Kenyan law as well as international law have been committed,” he said.

An employee at the Malindi mortuary said more bodies were expected.

“The information we have is that they are still digging up graves, and they have identified almost 50 graves there, so we are expecting more bodies but not sure how many will arrive in the next hours or days,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

He said from what he had seen of the bodies, “they look like they died of starvation.”

Walid Sketty, who works in the Rapid Response Team of Mombasa-based NGO Haki Africa, said survivors resisted attempts to give them food and water when they were rescued.

“They’re saying they are doing this because it’s their religion, and that they want to do this,” he said. “This is extremism of the highest order.”

Malanda Karisa, 33, who lives in Shakahola village in the same forest as the graves, said Mackenzie first came to the area in 2019 from Malindi town. He had been “kicked out” by local leaders after preaching that children should not go to school.

“What I have witnessed is tragic,” he said. “I saw seven bodies in one grave; there is a grave that they got eight people from.”

“I feel that there are more bodies there in the forest.”

Sketty said his organization first alerted authorities with concerns about Mackenzie one month ago. He was critical of the government for not responding sooner. “How does someone bury over 40 people without the government knowing?” he said. Villagers who spoke to The Washington Post were also critical of authorities for not responding to concerns about Mackenzie.

Samson Zia Kahindi, a representative to the county assembly, said they did try to save the church followers when they became aware of the starvation plans.

“We attempted a rescue two weeks back, but the area is heavily forested so when they would hear us coming, they would run deeper into the thicket - the preacher was heavily protected by his followers,” he said, adding that he believed 50 children had starved to death since January.

“The month of March was set aside for all the children to die. The month of April was set aside for the women to die. May was for the men to die,” said Kahindi, based on the questioning of a surviving cult member.

The pastor was arrested about a month ago on suspicion of involvement in the deaths of two children but he posted bail. The bail, however, was revoked after 15 cult members were rescued on April 14. Four died soon afterward. An operation to identify and dig up shallow graves in the forest began Friday, the state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corp. reported.

Magistrate Elizabeth Usui noted that Mackenzie had not been charged but was ordered behind bars for 14 days so he could not interfere with the police investigation.

This time around, authorities are going to make sure Mackenzie can’t just leave prison and continue his activities like before, Kenya’s director of public prosecution, Noordine Haji, said, and police were carefully gathering evidence.

“We want the judiciary to support us in this because the other time he went to court, he was given [$80] bail, and he came back here to continue what he was doing,” he said. “This is completely unacceptable.”

The Kenya Red Cross said 112 people had been reported missing as of Sunday to a tracing desk it set up at the Malindi Sub-County Hospital as part of its Shakahola response.

Mackenzie moved to Shakahola forest from Malindi after he was arrested and charged with “various offenses” in 2018, Kamau told the Star Kenya in March.

Mackenzie has said he disbanded the church at that time and denies wrongdoing in the deaths of the people found in recent days, the BBC reported.

What appears to be his former ministry’s website with posts from 2014 says its mission is “to nurture the faithful holistically in all matters of Christian spirituality as we prepare for the second coming of Jesus Christ through teaching and evangelism.”

Rodgers Mwibo told The Post he lost his mother, his aunt and his niece to the church. The three had disappeared from their home in Nairobi in June.

“When I finally managed to reach her, she told me that she was in Malindi with a pastor called Mackenzie who had given her half an acre piece of land and that she was okay,” he said. “After that, we lost touch again until when I saw the news that bodies of members of the church were being recovered.”

Benson Mutimba said he lost three of his four sons to the cult. They were recruited by the pastor at rallies he held at schools. “My sons would tell me that he would tell them that the world is ending, Jesus is coming and that education was evil.”

His eldest son, Felix, left to be with the preacher until his father was able to bring him back with the help of police. He was unstable and confused when he got home, Mutimba said.

“He told us that the world was ending and that he wanted to go back to the church with his siblings and all of us his family. He said school and work was evil, that we should also stop working,” Mutimba said. Felix later fled to the preacher again, taking his brothers with him.

Kindiki said Kenya’s government could introduce tighter regulation of religious organizations while remaining “respectful of religious freedom,” calling the deaths a “horrendous blight on our conscience” and an “atrocity on so many innocent souls.”

Kenya is at least 70 percent Christian, and evangelical pastors, including those from abroad, have gained popularity in recent times, holding rallies with thousands of followers. Many also practice Christianity with a blend of traditional beliefs that some have denounced as cults.

“Churches are regulated already. I do not think it is a problem of regulation, this is a problem of radical teachings,” Nelson Makanda, general secretary of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, said in an interview Monday.

Makanda suggested Kenya’s progressive constitution, which guarantees freedom of worship, was to blame. “Freedom of worship is enshrined in the constitution, and people can follow anybody they want to follow,” he said. “But these are crimes against the penal code that Kenya has. How did this happen under the watch of all the government administrators?”

President William Ruto said Monday the alleged actions of Mackenzie in Shakahola was “akin to terrorists” in that both “use religion to advance their heinous acts.”

“There is no difference between Mr. Mackenzie who pretends and postures as a pastor when in fact he is a terrible criminal,” he said.

“We must as a nation continuously look out for those who want to abuse, even the religious sector, people who are masquerading as religious people, yet what they do is contrary to the teachings and to the beliefs of religion,” he added.

Ruto’s Christian belief was at the core of his 2022 election campaign, and he has been filmed leading prayer before the start of cabinet meetings and praying and kneeling down in church on various occasions. His wife, Rachel Ruto, attends evangelical meetings held by local and international preachers in Kenya.

- - -

Vinall reported from Melbourne, Australia.