MOMBASA, Kenya — In a courtroom packed with tension on Monday, three young survivors offered harrowing accounts of life inside the cult led by controversial preacher Paul Mackenzie, accused of orchestrating one of Kenya’s deadliest mass killings in recent memory.
Mackenzie and 29 co-defendants are on trial for the deaths of more than 400 people in Shakahola Forest, where investigators uncovered mass graves in 2023. Prosecutors say the Good News International Church he founded turned into a doomsday cult that urged followers to starve themselves to death.
“Children First, Then Women”
One survivor, a 19-year-old identified only as O.H., told Mombasa’s High Court that his family was pressured to abandon Islam to join Mackenzie’s church in Nairobi.
The preacher’s teachings — spread through recorded sermons and Bible verses — denounced medicine, formal education, and even Kenya’s national identity program, calling it the “mark of the beast.”
Inside Shakahola, the witness testified, Mackenzie laid out a chilling order: children were to fast until death first, followed by women, then the elderly, and finally the preacher himself. Followers were told Jesus awaited them.
Burials were reframed as “weddings,” with congregants clapping and singing as they declared the dead had “wedded Christ.”
A Child Survivor’s Testimony
A 10-year-old boy, who gave evidence under protection, described being taken to an area of the forest called “Bethlehem.” He recalled the deaths of two siblings and said he had been dressed in turquoise and white “death clothes” as his turn approached.
DNA and post-mortem evidence later confirmed that his mother and brother were among those who perished in the cult’s grip.
Another witness, now 18, recounted how his mother pulled him out of school after consuming Mackenzie’s anti-education sermons. When he later joined her in Shakahola, he saw children buried in ceremonies disguised as weddings.
He eventually escaped after a week locked inside a house with his siblings, surviving only because he fled by bicycle to a nearby village.
Identifying the Accused
The survivors identified several of the 29 defendants as participants in digging graves and conducting rituals inside the forest settlement.
The trial, presided over by Lady Justice Diana Kavedza, is expected to hear further testimony from prosecution witnesses on Tuesday.
The Shakahola massacre shocked Kenya and the world, not only for the scale of the deaths but for the systematic indoctrination of entire families. As the court proceedings continue, survivors’ voices are now offering a rare and devastating window into how faith was twisted into a death sentence.
