Two Kenyan pastors appeared in court on Tuesday on suspicion of being involved in the deaths of at least 109 people in a forest in southeastern Kenya. The affair arouses fear and incomprehension in this religious country of East Africa.
In Kenya, the “Shakahola massacre” as it is now called, continues to mobilize the country. Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge is at the heart of the case. Through his sect, the International Church of Good News, he invited his faithful to fast for “meet jesus”. He is accused of having pushed his followers to starve to death. For the past ten days, investigators have been combing through his land in the Shakahola forest, near the town of Malindi, in eastern Kenya, where 109 remains have already been found.
500 reports of missing persons
The excavations were suspended on Monday May 1, but that does not mean that they are over. Investigators have more than 300 hectares of land to comb through. The human toll could increase. The Kenya Red Cross has registered nearly 500 reports of missing persons at its tracing office at Malindi Hospital.
The excavations were actually put on hold due to weather conditions. Heavy rains could compromise some evidence, authorities said. Moreover, the Malindi hospital morgue is already full.
In any case, the autopsy operations of the remains have just begun. The results are eagerly awaited, investigators have doubts about the causes of death, as some bodies were found with signs of injuries. There will also be operations to identify the remains by DNA sampling. A number of families have come to Malindi in the hope of hearing from their relatives, whom they suspect to be members of the sect, but with whom they have had no contact for sometimes several months.
A pastor already arrested in the past
At the head of this sect, there is therefore the self-proclaimed pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge. He is due to appear in court on Tuesday morning. This case has caused a lot of fear in Kenya, but the case also raises a lot of questions, in particular to understand how the events could have taken place without alerting the local authorities.
Especially since this is not the first time that Paul Mackenzie Nthenge has had to deal with justice. He had already been arrested in 2017 and 2019. At the time, he was accused of “radicalization” because he advocated not putting children in school. He asserted that education is not recognized in the Bible. Then he was arrested again in April after two children starved to death, but was released on bail.
In Malindi, relatives of followers of the sect told us that they had already declared the actions of the pastor to the police in the past, without having seen any follow-up by the police afterwards. In response to these questions, the Minister of the Interior announced that a commission of inquiry would be set up, precisely to conduct an investigation into potential negligence, whether on the part of the police or local authorities. .