Forest search resumes for Kenyan death cult victims of 'highly organised crime'

[May 09, 2023]  SHAKAHOLA FOREST, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenyan investigators have resumed the search for members of a doomsday cult in a forest where more than 100 corpses, mostly of children, have been exhumed, victims of a "highly organised crime", Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said on Tuesday. 

Paul Mackenzie, 50, a Kenyan cult leader accused of ordering his followers of the members of the Good News International Church to starve themselves to death in Shakahola forest, appears at Malindi Law Courts, in Malindi, Kenya, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

Paul Mackenzie, leader of the Good News International Church, has been detained and accused of ordering his followers to starve their children and themselves to death so they could go to heaven before the end of the world, which he predicted was going to happen on April 15.

With hundreds of people still thought to be missing, the search operation in the Shakahola forest in southeastern Kenya had been suspended for a few days because of bad weather but has now restarted, Kindiki said during a visit.

"We have many more graves in this forest, and therefore it leads us to conclude that this was a highly organised crime," Kindiki told reporters.

He said on Twitter post-mortem examinations on 112 bodies exhumed or recovered from Shakahola had been concluded. Search and rescue efforts for people "suspected to be holed up in the thickets and bushes have been going on".

President William Ruto on Friday announced an inquiry into the mass deaths, while a court kept Mackenzie in detention pending further investigations.

Mackenzie has not yet been required to enter a plea to any criminal charges. Two lawyers acting for him have declined to comment on the accusations against him.

Last week a court released on bail prominent televangelist Ezekiel Odero, whom authorities had said they suspected of being involved in the mass killing of his own followers.

Unlike in Mackenzie's case, police and authorities have not said anything about any bodies being found.

Odero is also suspected of helping launder money for Mackenzie, according to court documents seen by Reuters in which police say "huge cash transactions" thought to be linked to the sale of houses belonging to Mackenzie's followers were traced to Odero's bank accounts.

Reuters could not immediately reach a lawyer representing Odero.

(Reporting by Dicksy Obiero in the Shakahola Forest and Hereward Holland and Humphrey Malalo in Nairobi; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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