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A Kenyan decide on Wednesday stated {that a} doomsday cult chief who the authorities say directed his followers to starve themselves should endure a psychological well being analysis earlier than prosecutors formally cost him with the murders of 191 youngsters.
The costs relate to the invention final April of mass graves within the Shakahola Forest of southeastern Kenya, the place lots of of individuals had come to observe the teachings of the cult chief, Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, a former taxi driver turned televangelist. Mr. Mackenzie had marketed Shakahola to his followers as an evangelical Christian sanctuary from what he claimed was the fast-approaching apocalypse. The Kenyan authorities say that he informed members of his church to starve themselves to loss of life to satisfy Jesus; greater than 400 our bodies have been exhumed from the forest.
Mr. Mackenzie — who has denied the allegations — appeared in court docket on Wednesday within the Kenyan coastal metropolis of Malindi. The decide, Mugure Thande, gave prosecutors till Feb. 6 to be sure that he and his co-defendants are match to face trial.
The prosecutor’s workplace shared with journalists an inventory of expenses that it intends to carry in opposition to Mr. Mackenzie and 30 of his followers, together with 191 counts of kid homicide.
The workplace stated in a separate assertion on Tuesday that 95 folks in complete could be charged with crimes in reference to the case, which it referred to as the “Shakahola Bloodbath.”
Rights teams have protested earlier efforts to prosecute Mr. Mackenzie’s followers, arguing that the accused ought to as a substitute be helped.
The Kenyan authorities’s pathologists have stated that lots of the our bodies exhumed from Shakahola indicated loss of life by hunger, however some additionally confirmed indicators of strangulation.
One former member of the cult informed The New York Occasions that Mr. Mackenzie had preached that youngsters ought to be the primary to die — made “to quick within the solar so they’d die quicker” — so their mother and father may be certain that the youngsters would attain heaven.
As Hussein Khalid, the manager director of Haki Africa, a rights group that has carefully monitored the case, stated, “When adults died it meant their youngsters had already starved to loss of life.”
The invention of the mass graves within the Shakahola Forest, an 800-acre area of sun-scorched scrub and spindly timber, prompted outrage and soul-searching in Kenya. Among the our bodies had been buried as early as 2021, elevating questions from rights teams and observers about how the police and intelligence companies had failed to forestall the deaths.
The case, which on Wednesday once more dominated information protection in Kenya, has additionally raised questions on whether or not the Kenyan authorities ought to regulate spiritual establishments and about the way to deal with spiritual extremism within the nation.
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