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A Kenyan court has sentenced doomsday preacher Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison for the murder of 191 people — 190 of them children — in one of the worst cult tragedies in modern history. The sentence, handed down by the High Court in Mombasa on Friday, closes the murder trial of the Shakahola starvation cult, more than three years after bodies began emerging from a forest on Kenya's coast.
How the 200 years break down
Lady Justice Diana Kavedza sentenced Mackenzie to 100 years for the murders committed through starvation and a further 100 years for eight direct homicides, with the two terms running consecutively — an aggregate of 200 years. Of the 191 victims covered by the trial, 183 died from starvation — 182 children and one adult — while the other eight, all children, were suffocated, strangled or beaten to death. Mackenzie and 28 co-accused were convicted on October 19 on all 191 counts of murder. The co-accused received sentences ranging from 10 to 160 years; one of his closest associates, Steven Sanga Muye, was given 160 years.
Prosecutors had asked for the death penalty. The judge declined, saying in her sentencing remarks that executing the convicts could strengthen their belief that dying would reunite them with Jesus, rather than deter them. She also ordered the other convicts to be assessed for a disengagement and rehabilitation programme recommended by Kenya's National Counter Terrorism Centre.
What happened in Shakahola Forest
Mackenzie, founder of the Good News International Church, preached that the world would end in August 2023 and that his followers needed to fast in order to reach heaven. According to evidence heard in court, he persuaded followers to abandon their homes and move to Shakahola Forest in Kilifi County, on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast, where the fasting began with children before spreading to young people, women and men. Authorities began exhuming bodies from the forest in April 2023, after reports that people were dying while following his teachings. In total, 448 bodies were eventually recovered from Shakahola, according to figures cited by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights — but the murder trial covered only the 191 victims whose cases prosecutors were able to prove.
The case haunted Kenya from the moment the first graves were found, and it raised questions that go beyond one preacher: how a movement built on starvation operated openly for so long, why warnings were missed, and what protection exists for children inside closed religious groups. A Kenyan Senate report into the deaths described Mackenzie's teachings as based on "doomsday or end-times" beliefs, and investigators are still pursuing related cases.
What comes next
The sentence is not the end of Mackenzie's legal troubles. He and his remaining co-defendants still face separate proceedings involving terrorism, radicalisation and denying children access to education, and further charges could follow — the November 6 ruling establishes criminal responsibility for 191 murders, but it does not settle every question Shakahola raised. For the families of the victims, though, Friday delivered something the long trial had withheld: a number. Two hundred years, for 191 lives, most of them children who were told to starve first.
Sources: CNN and Kenyans.co.ke.