The High Court in Mombasa has sentenced self-proclaimed doomsday cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie to a total of 200 years in prison for his role in the mass starvation deaths of 191 followers in the Shakahola Forest massacre.
Presiding Judge Justice Diana Kavedza delivered the historic ruling on Friday, November 6, sentencing Mackenzie to two consecutive 100-year prison terms—comprising 100 years for murder by starvation and an additional 100 years for direct homicide. Twenty-eight co-defendants and accomplices were also convicted alongside Mackenzie, receiving prison sentences ranging between 10 and 160 years for their roles in enforcing the lethal fasts and burying victims.
The ruling follows a lengthy trial during which prosecutors established that Mackenzie, founder of the Good News International Church, systematically instructed his congregation to starve themselves and their children to death to “reach heaven” before the end of the world. Court records revealed that children were locked in makeshift fasting bays, denied water and food, and beaten if they attempted to escape or seek sustenance.
Justice Kavedza rejected Mackenzie’s defense claims that the fasting was voluntary, highlighting that 190 of the 191 murder victims in the specific case were innocent children incapable of giving informed consent. The judge noted that the tragedy represented an unprecedented systemic failure of regulatory oversight and urged Parliament to institute strict legislative measures to oversee religious institutions.
The Shakahola investigation remains one of East Africa’s deadliest cult-related massacres, with over 440 bodies exhumed from shallow graves across the 800-acre forest since police first raided the site in April 2023. Defense lawyers announced plans to appeal the 200-year sentence, while survivors and victims’ families gathered outside the court building expressed relief that legal justice had finally been served.