A Kenyan court is about to deliver a judgment in one of the country's most painful criminal cases, the mass murder trial of self-styled doomsday preacher Paul Mackenzie. He and 29 of his followers are charged with murdering 191 people, and almost all of the victims were children.
Prosecutors say Mackenzie's cult forced children and their parents to starve to death so that they could "meet Jesus." According to the case, his teachings told followers that school was forbidden and that modern medicine was evil. Mackenzie and the 29 others have all denied the murder charges. They insist that nobody was forced to die and that people chose to fast on their own because of their faith.
One of the accused, Mackenzie's former head of security Enos Amanya Ngala, was first charged with the others. He later struck a plea deal and is now a witness for the prosecution. His testimony is among the things the court has had to weigh.
The stories from the forest are hard to read. Gravediggers hired from the nearby town of Shakahola say they once dug up 12 children's bodies lying in a single grave, stacked one on top of another. Some of the children had their hands and legs tied, and their bodies were wrapped in bedsheets. Others were so young that they were only a few weeks old when they died. Authorities say more than 400 bodies were pulled from shallow graves in the forest. Some of the diggers were paid just $8 (about £6) a day for work that left many of them traumatised.
Not all the victims came from far away. Many of Mackenzie's followers travelled from across Kenya to join him, but some of the people found in the graves were known to the residents of Shakahola. The cult members regularly came into town to buy supplies and fetch water from the nearby River Galana, so some locals recognised faces they had seen before.
The roots of the tragedy go back more than two decades. Mackenzie started Good News International Ministries in 2003, and over the next 16 years it grew into a church with thousands of followers in different parts of the country. His sermons were broadcast on Times TV, a station run by the church from Malindi. Former members say the church services were long and emotional, with children seated at the back, adults in the middle, and worship going on for hours. Mackenzie's End Days sermons described education as evil, healthcare as against God's will, and digital identity cards as the mark of the devil.
The church shut its main building in 2019, and Mackenzie moved his followers to the Shakahola forest. Peter Shukrani, now 23, was one of the people who went with his mother. He was rescued in March 2023 after falling ill, but he says his condition got worse because his mother kept throwing away the medicine he was supposed to take. Her belief was that only God could heal him. Shukrani still speaks warmly of Mackenzie, saying that the pastor never forced anyone to fast and that he still considers him his spiritual father.
Other families tell a very different story. Stephen Mwiti says he lost all six of his children in the forest. He went to confront Mackenzie at one point and was shocked by what he saw. He has since found and buried only one of his sons, Samuel, and he holds a family photo as he speaks about the loss.
Mackenzie is also facing several other cases, including charges of terrorism, radicalisation and denying children their right to education. But this is the first time he will face a verdict on the most serious charges, murder. In the 298 pages of court documents describing the case, 190 of the 191 victims are listed as children. Many of the bodies are still unidentified because they have decomposed so badly, and some are recorded only as unknown male or female children, identified by where and when they were found.
Whatever the court decides, the families of the victims are still waiting for answers, and the survivors are still trying to rebuild their lives.
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