Police are calling the events at the church “disturbing and inhumane.” They say Mackenzie, 50, is a cult leader who allegedly brainwashed hundreds of his followers into starving themselves to death. Police say the case began with the deaths of two children.
He was arrested In March, suspected of giving instructions to the two children “to observe fasting till death in order to meet their maker,” said the police.
Kenyan prosecutors said at the time that the two children were “believed to have been starved and later suffocated to death by their mother with the intention of starving the minors in order for them to die and become heroes before God after death.”
The youngsters were allegedly buried in shallow graves at Shakahola on March 16 and 17, according to the prosecution, by Mackenzie and their parents. A court in Malindi ordered their exhumation.
The inquiry was launched after police received a tip-off that an area of land Mackenzie occupied in the Shakahola forest contained mass graves.
A grim tale of horror unfolded as they began exhuming bodies. Many of those found in the forest are believed to be followers of Mackenzie. Some of the group who were rescued told police they had been told to starve themselves to death.
Titus Katana, a former member of GNI, told local media that Mackenzie had a roster that determined who was to starve to death first. According to Katana, children and single people were the first to fast, before women and men followed. “Mackenzie and his family would go last,” he told the Kenyan newspaper, Nation.
Police clad in overalls have been scouring the site since April and have found an increasing number of bodies day by day.
hibutse traveled to the forest near Malindi in search of his mother and said he saw bodies coming out of the shallow graves.
“I’ve seen many exhumed bodies. I was imagining if my mum was in this condition. I’m traumatized because I’m asking myself many questions: ‘Is my mum dead or not?’ If she’s dead, ‘does she look the way the other bodies are looking?’ Some ladies I saw being rescued alive from the bush looked very weak, you can even count their ribs,” he recalled.
“I saw a lot of things. People were there dying, some who had died were not even buried. I saw the decayed body of a man with no private part,” he said.
Some of Mackenzie’s followers were found alive but weakened, emaciated, and traumatized, according to rescue teams who said some resisted help.
“There was a lady who was found, she was very weak but resisted opening her mouth to get even a sip of water. This is extremism and brainwashing of the highest order,” Walid Sketty of Kenya-based human rights group Haki Africa, which has been involved in rescue operations at Shakahola, told CNN.
Government chief pathologist Johansen Oduor told reporters at the start of the autopsy process weeks ago that some of the 249 bodies so far recovered “had features of starvation.” Oduor told reporters that 36 autopsies were done, out of which 14 were found to have starved to death.
I have read some things about it, I'm afraid I can't comprehend how people can get caught up into believing such crazy interpretations of what the Bible is supposed to be saying.
