The leader of a religious sect in Kenya, Paul Mackenzie, has been sentenced to 200 years in prison for killing 190 children and an adult in one of the most serious tragedies associated with religious cults in recent years.
The decision has been announced by a court in the coastal town of Embassy, two weeks after Mackenzie was convicted of crimes. The sentence includes 100 years in prison for murder through hunger and another 100 years for direct murder.
According to the prosecutor, Mackenzie led the church, the Watchtower News International, a Christian apocalypse, whose members were ordered not to feed and to allow their children to die of hunger, in the belief that they would thus go to heaven before the end of the world.
According to investigators, his associates threatened and violated the victims to force them to follow these orders. The lifeless bodies were found in shallow graves and pits, while some of the victims were allegedly buried alive.
The investigation began in 2023, after police accepted a report on families that were letting their children starve to death in Shakahola Forest, off the southeastern coast of Kenya.
Mackenzie was first arrested in 2023, while weeks later authorities began excavations and discovery of mass graves in the area.
So far, over 400 bodies have been extracted, many of them in an advanced state of decomposition. Only 26 of them have been identified.
Mackenzie has denied charges of murder, claiming he had not forced victims to die of starvation. However, the court has rejected that claim.
Judge Diana Kavedza-Mochache stated during a session that lasted more than eight hours than, in some cases, the children were isolated and denied food, while their parents looked at them without interference.
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Source Layer: Signal
