A court on Wednesday (May 10th) ordered the continued detention of Pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, accused of the deaths of at least 133 people in a forest in southeastern Kenya where followers of his evangelical sect gathered.
Paul Nthenge Mackenzie will be prosecuted for "terrorism", prosecutors announced on May 2, in this case called "the massacre of the Shakahola forest" which has caused a stir in this religious country of East Africa.
"Meeting Jesus"
A judge in the southeastern city of Mombasa ordered the detention of Pastor Mackenzie and 17 co-defendants, including his wife, extended for 30 days from May 2, when they appeared in court. Prosecutors had asked for 90 days. A total of 133 people, including many children, have so far been found dead. The search for mass graves and survivors is still ongoing in this forest on the Kenyan coast.
Autopsies on the first 112 bodies show that most of the victims died of starvation, presumably after following the sermons of Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, a self-proclaimed pastor of the International Church of the Good News who advocated fasting "to meet Jesus". Some victims, including children, were strangled, beaten or suffocated, the head of forensic operations, Johansen Oduor, said last week.
"Organ trafficking"
The autopsies also revealed that there were "missing organs on some of the bodies," said the Directorate of Criminal Investigations in a court document seen Tuesday by AFP, evoking "a well-coordinated trafficking of human organs involving several actors". Paul Mackenzie has been detained since he surrendered to authorities on April 14, after police discovered the first victims in Shakahola Forest. About fifty mass graves have since been discovered.
Kenya's most influential pastor, Ezekiel Odero, was also arrested on 28 April in connection with the case and released on bail last Thursday. He is under investigation because of the possible presence of bodies of some of his followers among the corpses found in Shakahola. More than 20 bank accounts belonging to him have been frozen. This massacre has revived the debate on the regulation of religions in Kenya, a predominantly Christian country with 4000,<> "churches", according to official figures.
President William Ruto has established a task force to "review the legal and regulatory framework governing religious organizations." The scandal also put the authorities under fire for failing to prevent the actions of Pastor Mackenzie, who was arrested several times for his extreme preaching.
