A Kenyan court on Tuesday added charges for
"assassinations"
to those for
"terrorism"
,
"torture"
and
"cruelty"
on children as well as
"manslaughter"
already brought against pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, after the death of 429 followers of his evangelical sect.
This time he will be tried for 191 murders.
The self-proclaimed pastor and 29 other defendants pleaded not guilty, an AFP journalist noted during their appearance before a court in the city of Malindi, ten months after the revelation of this affair which shocked Kenya, a predominantly religious country. Christian from East Africa.
A person was judged mentally unfit to be prosecuted, after psychiatric assessments.
The
“Shakahola Massacre”
Paul Nthenge Mackenzie had already pleaded not guilty to previous charges brought against him, including those of
“facilitating the commission of a terrorist act”
,
“possession of an article relating to an offense under the Prevention of Terrorism Act”
,
“participation in organized criminal activity”
and
“radicalization”
formally pronounced on January 18, those of
“involuntary homicide”
on January 23 and those of
“torture”
and
“cruelty”
of children on January 25.
This former taxi driver turned pastor has been in pre-trial detention since April 14, the day after the discovery of the first victims in the Shakahola forest (southeast of Kenya) where the International Church of Good News that he founded in 2010. He advocated to his followers to fast until death to
“meet Jesus” before the end of the world which he predicted for August 2023. The research carried out in Shakahola, a vast
“bush”
area
on the Kenyan coast , made it possible to exhume 429 bodies, some buried for several years.
Autopsies revealed that the majority of victims died of starvation.
Some, including children, were strangled, beaten or suffocated.
The revelation of this scandal, called the
“Shakahola massacre”
, placed the Kenyan authorities under fire for not having prevented the actions of the pastor, who was nevertheless arrested several times for his extreme preaching.
In a report published in October, a senatorial commission pointed to
“failings”
in justice and the police, alerted in 2017 and 2019. In July, Minister of the Interior Kithure Kindiki estimated that
“the Shakahola massacre ( was) the worst security breach in Kenya's history
.