“They told us that there were people starving, that they were radicalized by a member of a church who told them they should die,” said Charles Kamau, one of the police officers leading the investigation that has discovered the forest of horrors in Kenya. Located on the outskirts of the city of Malindi, in eastern Kenya, it is littered with mass graves with dozens of victims of Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, leader of a sect who had convinced his faithful that they should stop eating to know God.
Yesterday the police found another 17 new bodies, bringing the death toll to 90 for now. Among them are many children. In one of the graves, dug very shallow, were five people, believed to be members of the same family. They were lying next to each other.
Members of the security forces continue to unravel the Shakahola forest, delimiting the graves with yellow tape and dragging white bags for the victims of the Hunger Sect, as several media outlets have dubbed it, although the official name of the church is Good News International Church (Church of the Good News).
Paul Mackenzie Nthenge promoted extreme fasting among his faithful to “know Jesus.” After working for years as a taxi driver, Nthenge became a pastor two decades ago. He himself turned himself in to the police on April 14, after the discovery of the first four dead, and will appear in court on May 2, reports the Afp agency. He could be charged with terrorism, according to authorities.
The discovery of this forest of tombs has shocked an entire country, Kenya. Its president, William Ruto, announced that he would crack down on “shady” religious movements. “Terrorists use religion to promote their heinous acts. People like Mackenzie use religion to do exactly the same thing,” he said.
Its Interior Minister, Kithure Kindiki, traveled to the area yesterday and warned that it was feared that the number of victims would rise. “We don’t know how many mass graves we will find,” he confessed.
According to the newspaper ‘Nation’ (Kenya), Nthenge founded his church in 2003 and tried to create branches in various cities in the country. It is estimated that he managed to attract some 3,000 devotees. In 2017, he was arrested for inciting children not to go to school because the Bible, he claimed, does not recognize education. Nearly a hundred children were rescued within the facilities of the Good News Church.
This same newspaper reveals that in 2018, a parliamentarian from Malindi (the city where the forest of horrors is located), denounced that Mackenzie Nthenge was giving bribes to the police to prevent the authorities from closing her church.
A few days ago, when the police were in the Shakahola forest – where they have found numerous personal and hygiene items, clothes and several Bibles – they also found a man identified as Zablon Mwana, who claimed to be a pastor; it is suspected that he was one of the sect leader’s collaborators. “I was convinced that he was the one chosen to lead us to meet Jesus. Who are you to change our beliefs? Don’t we have the right to believe what we want?” asked Zablon, who, by the way, was not complying with the extreme fasting that has killed dozens of people.
The morgue of the local Malindi hospital is overwhelmed by the arrival of bodies, said Said Ali, head of the health center, informed Afp journalists yesterday. Excavations in the forest could be halted as police officers need more time to carry out autopsies (many of the bodies are in an advanced state of decomposition and there is no place to keep the bodies).
“Every day that passes there is a good chance that other people will die,” said Hussein Khalid, executive director of the NGO Haki Africa, which was one of the organizations that first alerted the police. In the city there are more than 200 missing people.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
