Kenya cult death toll hits 200, with more than 600 reported missing – National | 24CA News
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The dying toll linked to a doomsday cult in Kenya hit 201 Saturday after police exhumed 22 extra our bodies, most of them bearing indicators of hunger, in accordance with the coast regional commissioner.
The our bodies are believed to be these of followers of a pastor based mostly in coastal Kenya, Paul Mackenzie. He’s alleged to have ordered congregants to starve to dying as a way to meet Jesus.
More than 600 persons are nonetheless lacking.
Mackenzie, who was arrested final month, stays in custody. Police plan to cost him with terrorism-related offenses.
Hundreds of our bodies have been dug up from dozens of mass graves unfold throughout his 800-acre property, positioned within the coastal county of Kilifi.
Mackenzie insists that he closed his church in 2019 and moved to his property in a forested space to farm.
Autopsies performed on greater than 100 our bodies final week confirmed the victims died of hunger, strangulation, suffocation and accidents sustained from blunt objects.
Local media shops have been reporting circumstances of lacking inside physique organs, quoting investigators within the case.
Mackenzie, his spouse and 16 different suspects will seem in courtroom on the finish of the month.
Preacher Paul Mackenzie, middle, who was arrested two weeks in the past for asking his followers to starve to dying as a way to meet Jesus, seems at a courtroom in Malindi, Kenya Tuesday, May 2, 2023. The courtroom in Malindi launched the pastor and the police re-arrested him and introduced him at an higher courtroom within the coastal city of Shanzu.
(AP Photo)
Coast regional commissioner Rhoda Onyancha on Saturday mentioned the full variety of these arrested stood at 26, with 610 folks reported as lacking by their households.
It is unclear what number of survivors have been rescued so removed from the search and rescue operations on Mackenzie’s huge property. Some of them have been too weak to stroll once they have been discovered.
Cults are widespread in Kenya, which has a non secular society.
Police throughout the nation have been questioning different spiritual leaders whose teachings are believed to be deceptive and opposite to fundamental human rights.
President William Ruto final week shaped a fee of inquiry to research how a whole lot of individuals have been lured to their deaths on the coast and suggest motion on establishments that did not act.
Mackenzie had prior to now been charged with the deaths of kids in his church in a case that’s ongoing in courtroom. Residents close by had raised the alarm after his followers moved to the forested space.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
