NAIROBI: Police in Kenya have exhumed more than 20 bodies in the east of the country as part of an investigation into followers of a Christian cult who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves to death.
Police began exhuming bodies on Friday from more than a dozen suspected graves, said Charles Kamau, a detective in Malindi, a town near the Shakahola forest in Kilifi County, where police last week rescued 15 members of the Good News International Church, according to footage broadcast by Citizen TV.
A police source on Saturday told AFP on condition of anonymity that 21 bodies had been found so far and that a lot more could yet be uncovered.
Kenya’s NTV channel reported Saturday that seven bodies were removed from two of 32 suspected gravesites marked out by police.
The leader of the Good News International Church, Paul Mackenzie, also referred to as Paul Nthenge Mackenzie in reports, had been arrested, the Reuters news agency reported.
Mckenzie is on a hunger strike in his cell since his arrest last week, NTV reported.
Controversial Kilifi cult leader Paul Mackenzie has staged a hunger strike within police cells. https://t.co/MUqHQwsTpU
— NTV Kenya (@ntvkenya) April 22, 2023
Police said the 15 rescued worshippers were told to starve themselves to death so they could meet their creator. It said four of them died before reaching the hospital.
A former church member, Titus Katana helped police identify the graves.
Matthew Shipeta from Haki Africa, a Mombasa-based human rights organization, reported seeing at least 15 shallow graves in the forest.
Helen Mikali, who manages a children’s home and was also assisting the investigators, said she visited multiple nearby villages where parents and children had gone missing.
“Personally I have visited about 18 children’s graves,” she told Citizen TV; however, she did not say how she knew the graves were of children.
Last month police arrested Mackenzie and later released him for encouraging the parents of two boys to starve and suffocate their sons to death.
Mackenzie has denied any wrongdoing.
During a court appearance in that case, the pasture said he was unaware of the events that led to the deaths of the two boys, adding he was being targeted as part of a hostile propaganda from some of his former colleagues, The Standard newspaper reported.
Six of Mackenzie’s associates had also been arrested, according to local media.
