News

25 April 2023

• Pastor Paul Mackenzie is on a hunger strike while in detention.

• 67 bodies have so far been exhumed from Shakahola.

A Kenyan woman has narrated to Maina Kageni how her brother died under Pastor Mackenzie's guidance.

Another caller shared how his friend lost his wife, daughter, and grandchild in Shakahola.

*Mike says

"My wife's friend started being hard-headed and behaving weirdly in 2020.

She would go for a week before resurfacing.

She later carried the daughter and the grandchild and disappeared, even their mobile phones went off."

Mike says in 2022 the woman called and informed the husband they were at Shakaholla where they had been given land.

"In 2022 she called her husband and told her she had been given land and that she had already built.

When the Shakahola news appeared his son went with their photos to look for them.

He was shown the grave to his sister and niece, but the mother's whereabouts are unknown.

The government should do something about it. My friend is in shock as he does not know where his family is."

Carol shared her story saying

"My brother died there (Shakahola).

I would go to pick him up and whenever he saw me he would run away Maina.

You cry till you can't anymore. The corpses have no smell at all. It's like they already decayed."

*Rose says she is now married because a pastor told her female friend to leave her husband.

“My best friend left her husband because the pastor told her he’s the reason she’s having the backaches na mimi ni nani nikachukua huyo bwana yake.

Saa hii we are happily married, I had been praying for a husband and she was busy leaving her husband.

Mtu mwingine aombewe awache nyumba yake niingie..”

67 bodies have so far been exhumed at Shakahola.

The bodies were exhumed even as investigations into pastor Paul Mackenzie’s church-like cult intensifies.

On Sunday, one woman was rescued in one of the hideouts in a bad health state, witnesses and police said.

Of the bodies recovered on Sunday, three were in one grave, two in one and one in a single grave.

The grave diggers said they had also earmarked a grave with seven more people in the Sunday exercise.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki said he will visit Shakahola Village on Tuesday, April 25 even as he called on the Coast Regional Commissioner and security chiefs to reinforce the team currently carrying out exhumation at Nthenge’s land.

The CS called out the unfolding massacre of cult members as “the clearest abuse of the constitutionally enshrined human right to freedom of worship.”

He called for tighter regulation of religious entities including churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues across the country.

Police reported earlier on Saturday that Nthenge was on a hunger strike.

At the beginning of the exercise, the authorities had a total of 32 sites to dig up.

They had hoped to recover 32 bodies as per an informer who had tipped them off, police said. But they increased to 47.

Nthenge has been in the limelight for allegedly influencing his followers too fast to death.

In one of the graves that had been dug up, there were the bodies of five family members - a father, mother and their three children. Most of them are not from the area.

Nthenge appeared before Malindi Chief Magistrate Elizabeth Usui last Monday afternoon.

He was not required to plead to any charge, with the prosecution seeking 30 more days to hold him as they complete the probe.

He was arraigned alongside 13 other people in the case that will be mentioned on May 2.

The ruling was for the cult leader to remain in police custody for 14 days alongside six of his followers as police probe the issue.