Kenyan prosecutors have announced expanded criminal charges against self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, the alleged mastermind behind a mass starvation cult that resulted in hundreds of fatalities. The new indictment covers 52 additional deaths at the Binzaro homestead in Kilifi County, occurring approximately 30 kilometers from the initial massacre site in Shakahola forest.
Mackenzie, who has been detained since April 2023 following the exhumation of 429 bodies from mass graves, now faces allegations of orchestrating further fatalities while imprisoned. According to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, investigators discovered handwritten notes from Mackenzie’s prison cell detailing mobile phone transactions used to coordinate the expanded operation.
The latest charges include radicalization, facilitation of terrorist acts, and murder, supplementing existing manslaughter charges from the Shakahola incident. Prosecutors assert Mackenzie employed “radical teachings and coordinated structures” to lure followers to remote locations where they were instructed to starve themselves in preparation for the apocalypse.
This development follows the recent guilty plea by Enos Amanya Ngala, Mackenzie’s former security chief, regarding the deaths of 191 children discovered in the initial mass graves. Survivor accounts reveal a hierarchical starvation order devised by Mackenzie: children first, followed by unmarried adults, women, men, and finally church leaders.
Mackenzie established the Good News International Church in 2003, formally closing it in 2019 while continuing operations. His teachings denounced formal education as satanic and unbiblical, resulting in prior arrests in 2017 and 2018 for encouraging school abandonment. The case has sparked significant criticism of Kenyan authorities for insufficient regulatory oversight that might have prevented the tragedy.