Two pastors appear in court on Tuesday, May 2, suspected of being involved in the death of at least 109 people in a forest in southeastern Kenya, a case that has aroused fear and incomprehension in this religious country in West Africa. ballast.
Self-proclaimed pastor of the International Church of Good News, Paul Mackenzie Nthenge must be presented to a court in the city of Malindi. He is accused of causing his followers to starve “to meet Jesus” in the nearby forest of Shakahola. Ezekiel Odero, one of the most influential pastors in the country, is expected in court in Mombasa, the country’s second city, where he was transferred after his arrest in Malindi on Thursday. He was taken into custody pending investigations into his possible involvement in what has come to be known as the “Shakahola Forest Massacre”.
It is in this forest on the Kenyan coast where the faithful of the sect of Paul Mackenzie Nthenge met that around thirty mass graves were found containing around a hundred bodies, the majority of them children, according to a still provisional assessment. . Paul Mackenzie Nthenge – who surrendered to the police on April 14, after the first police operation in the forest – is facing, along with thirteen other people, charges of “murder”, “conspiracy to murder”, ” kidnapping for the purpose of confinement” and “cruelty to children”, among other things, according to court documents seen by AFP.
Wealthy televangelist
Investigators suspect the victims died of starvation after following his precepts of fasting to death to “meet Jesus.” Initial autopsies on ten bodies also revealed deaths of children by asphyxiation. “No organs were missing,” National Forensic Services chief Johansen Oduor told reporters. Full DNA identification results may not be known for “months”, he added.
The victims may not all be members of the International Church of the Good News. The case indeed experienced an unexpected twist on Thursday, with the arrest of Ezekiel Odero. A Mombasa court is due to rule on Tuesday on a request by prosecutors to keep him in custody for 30 days, because “there is credible information linking the exhumed bodies […] to Shakahola” with “several innocent and vulnerable followers [of the church]. d’Odero] who would have died,” they said. This rich and famous televangelist, at the head of his church called Prayer Center and Church of New Life, is notably targeted by investigations for “murder”, “assisted suicide”, “kidnapping”, “radicalization”, “crimes against humanity”, “cruelty to children”, “fraud and money laundering”.
The scandal rocked Kenya, a predominantly Christian country with 4,000 “churches”, according to official figures. The authorities are under fire for not having prevented the actions of Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, yet arrested several times for his extreme sermons. President William Ruto has promised action against those who “use religion to advance a shady and unacceptable ideology”, likening them to “terrorists”.
