By Salma El-Sakka
Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie is due to be sentenced on Friday after being convicted last month of murdering 190 children and one adult in the Shakahola Forest tragedy, one of the worst cult-related massacres in recent history.
Families fear lasting influence
Relatives of the victims, including Stephen Mwiti who lost all six of his children, worry that Mackenzie could continue to spread his ideology from behind bars. Mwiti has called for the defendants, among them his own wife who led the children into the forest in 2022, to be held in solitary confinement to prevent them from influencing other prisoners.
Of the more than 400 bodies recovered from the forest, only 26 have been identified. Mwiti’s seven-year-old son Samuel was the only one of his children whose remains were identified; a post-mortem revealed he had been strangled. “Even if he were to be hanged, I will never see my children again,” Mwiti said at his son’s grave in Malindi.
Ongoing threat from followers
Authorities say Mackenzie’s followers have continued to promote his teachings after his arrest, and dozens more bodies linked to the cult were discovered in a nearby village last year. Prosecutors argued that Mackenzie ordered followers to starve themselves and their children to death to reach heaven before the world ended. Mackenzie and 28 co-defendants could face the death penalty, though Kenya has not carried out an execution in decades.
