A court in the Kenyan city of Mombasa on November 6 sentenced Pastor Paul Mackenzie for the killing of 190 children and one adult. According to the prosecution, the preacher ordered followers to starve themselves and their children, promising they would reach heaven before the end of the world, Reuters reports. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
Judge Diana Kavedza imposed two 100-year terms on Mackenzie, to be served consecutively. The court found that 183 people died of starvation, while eight others died as a result of direct violence. The judge called the killings "cold-blooded and calculated."
Twenty-eight of Mackenzie's followers were convicted alongside him. They included guards who enforced the hunger strike and people who helped conceal mass graves. They received prison terms ranging from 10 to 160 years. The longest sentence among the accomplices was given to the pastor's assistant, Smart Mwakalama. Mackenzie's lawyer told the Associated Press that he had already filed an appeal.
In 2019, authorities closed Mackenzie's church in the coastal town of Malindi. The preacher then moved to the Shakahola forest, where his followers lived away from settlements. In April 2023, police began finding bodies in shallow graves there. According to the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights, 448 bodies were exhumed from the graves in the forest.
The current sentence concerns the deaths of 191 people. In a separate case, Mackenzie is accused of ordering the deaths of another 52 people. Their bodies were found at another location, about 30 km from the Shakahola forest. The preacher denies guilt in that case.
Earlier, Kursiv reported on South African pastor Joshua Mhlakela. In October 2026, he named for the third time the date when, according to him, believers were supposed to ascend to heaven. His two previous predictions did not come true.