MALINDI, Kenya (AP) — Shukran Kalisa Mangi would regularly show up drunk to his workplace, where he would dig up bodies. Doomsday Cultist He was buried in a shallow grave, but no amount of booze could dull the shock he felt the morning he discovered his best friend’s body, his neck badly twisted and his head facing in opposite directions from his torso.
The violent deaths upset Mangi, who had already exhumed the children’s bodies. The body count continued to rise In this community off the coast of Kenya, a radical evangelical leader Paul McKenzie is accused He ordered his followers to starve to death in order to have a chance to meet Jesus.
A piece of clothing lies in the bushes near a forest where dozens of bodies were found in shallow graves in Shakahora village near the coastal city of Malindi, southern Kenya, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (Photo by The Associated Press/Brian Inganga)
Mangi said recently that he sometimes sees other people’s dead bodies when he tries to sleep, but when he is awake he is tormented by recurring images of the dismembered body of his friend.
“He died very cruelly,” said Mangi, one of the gravediggers whose work was halted earlier this year as bodies piled up at the morgue. “I still spend most of my time thinking about how he died.”
in One of the worst cult-related massacres in historyAt least 436 bodies have been found since police raided the Good News International Church, located in a forest about 70 kilometres inland from the coastal town of Malindi. Seventeen months on, many in the area remain shaken by the incident, despite multiple warnings about the church’s leadership.
McKenzie has pleaded not guilty to the murders of 191 children, multiple counts of manslaughter and other crimes, and faces spending the rest of his life in prison if convicted.
Salama Marsha, a former follower of radical evangelical leader Paul McKenzie, stands outside his temporary housing unit near the site where dozens of bodies were found in shallow graves in Shakahora village near the southern Kenyan coastal city of Malindi, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
Some in Malindi who spoke to The Associated Press said Mackenzie’s confidence in detention shows the far-reaching power some preachers wield, even if their teachings undermine government authority, break the law or harm followers who desperately hope for healings or other miracles.
Thomas Kakala, a self-styled bishop of Malindi-based Jesus Cares Ministries International, said McKenzie was not alone, referring to some questionable pastors he had come into contact with in the capital, Nairobi.
Thomas Kakala, a self-proclaimed bishop of Malindi-based Jesus Cares Ministries International, speaks during an interview at his home in the southern Kenyan coastal city of Malindi, Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
“You look at them. If you’re sober and you want to hear the word of God, you wouldn’t go to their church,” he said, “but the place is packed.”
A man like Mackenzie, who refused to join the ranks of Malindi pastors and rarely quoted the Bible; KenyaSix detectives were suspended for ignoring multiple warnings about McKenzie’s misconduct, Mr Cakara said.
Mr. Cacara said he tried to discredit Mr. MacKenzie several years ago, but was disappointed. Mr. MacKenzie played tapes of Mr. Cacara on his television station and declared him an enemy. Mr. Cacara felt threatened.
“They were part of his power and he used them,” Cacara said.
Kenya, like many countries in East Africa, Christians ruleEvangelical Christianity, mostly Anglican or Catholic, has been widespread since the 1980s, and many pastors develop their ministry in the style of successful American televangelists, investing in broadcasting and advertising.
FILE – Body bags are lined up after the discovery of dozens of bodies buried in a shallow grave in the village of Shakahola, near the coastal city of Malindi, southern Kenya, April 24, 2023. Bodies believed to be followers of extremist evangelical leader Paul McKenzie are lined up at the scene. (AP Photo/File)
Many African evangelical churches are run like private enterprises, with no board of directors or congregational guidance. Pastors are often unaccountable and derive their authority from their supposed ability to perform miracles or make prophecies. Some, like MacKenzie, appear to be omnipotent.
A high school graduate and former street vendor and taxi driver, Mr Mackenzie was apprenticed to a preacher in Malindi in the late 1990s and opened his own church in the sleepy tourist town in 2003.
A charismatic preacher, he was said to perform miracles and exorcisms, and was generous with money. His followers, who included teachers and police officers, traveled to Malindi from all over Kenya, making Mackenzie famous nationwide and causing widespread mourning for his death.
Rabbi Sheikh Famau Mohammed, one of the first religious leaders to raise concerns about extremist evangelical leader Paul McKenzie, speaks at a rally in the southern Kenyan coastal city of Malindi, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
“As a religious leader, I find Mr. Mackenzie a very mysterious character. I cannot understand how he was able to kill so many people in one place,” said Sheikh Famau Mohammed of Malindi. “But what is still puzzling at this point is that he is still speaking so bravely… I feel he has done nothing wrong.”
The initial complaints against McKenzie were over his opposition to formal schooling and vaccinations. He was briefly detained in 2019 for opposing a government effort to assign national identification numbers to Kenyans, which he said were satanic.
He closed the church’s compound in Malindi later that year and encouraged his congregants to come to Shakahola, where he leased 800 acres of forest inhabited by elephants and big cats.
Children at Shakahola Comprehensive School play outside their classrooms near the site where dozens of bodies were found in shallow graves in Shakahola village near the southern Kenyan coastal city of Malindi, Thursday, September 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
According to survivors, church members were required to pay Shakahola a small amount of money to own land, build houses and live in villages with biblical names like Nazareth. Mackenzie became increasingly demanding, and people from different villages were forbidden from contacting or meeting together, said former church member Salama Marsha.
“The moment I realised Mackenzie wasn’t a good person was when he said we should fast our children to death,” said Marcia, who ran away after witnessing two children starve to death. “That’s when I realised it wasn’t something I could do.”
The thatched, solar-paneled house where MacKenzie lived was known as “Ikulu,” or state house. Police found milk and bread in his refrigerator while his followers starved nearby. He had bodyguards. He had informants. And, crucially, he had the aura of a self-proclaimed prophet “daddy” to thousands of obedient followers.
FILE – Paul McKenzie, the radical evangelical leader arrested for allegedly preaching to his followers to fast and die to meet Jesus, appears in court accompanied by some of his followers in Malindi, Kenya, Monday, April 17, 2023. (AP Photo/File)
“He’s like a chief because there’s a little village and he’s the elder of that village,” Robert Basa Mackenzie said of his brother’s authority in Shakahora. “He went there and in just two years he built a big village and a lot of people followed him.”
Mbatha McKenzie, a stonemason who lives with his family and goats in a tin shed in Malindi, said his father was generous to his followers but never extended the same kindness to his relatives.
“My brother was like a politician,” he said. “He was eloquent, and when he told the people something, they believed him.”
Former church members who fled Shakahola said they lost faith in Mackenzie after seeing how his men treated people dying of starvation, and that Mackenzie’s bodyguards would carry the starving people away, never to be seen again.
The woman said it was “common” for bodyguards to rape women in her village. She said she was sexually assaulted by four men while pregnant with her fourth child. The Associated Press does not identify victims of sexual assault unless they choose to be identified publicly.
According to former church members, anyone who tried to leave the woods without Pastor MacKenzie’s permission or was found to have broken the fast was beaten.
Autopsy Over 100 bodies The bodies show bodies killed by starvation, strangulation, suffocation and blunt force injuries. Gravedigger Mangi believes there are many more mass graves yet to be discovered in Shakahola. The Kenya Red Cross says at least 600 people are missing.
Priscilla Rizicki, who left Mackenzie’s church in 2017 but lost a daughter and three grandchildren at Shakahola, broke down in tears as she recalled how Mackenzie “started out nice” but became increasingly disrespectful to members. Rizicki said her daughter, Lorin, was not allowed to take her children on family visits without Mackenzie’s permission.
One of Rydzicki’s grandsons has been identified through DNA testing and given a proper burial, while Lorin and her two children are presumed dead.
The COVID-19 pandemic intensified Mackenzie’s apocalyptic views, according to witnesses, during which he ordered stricter fasts that intensified by the end of 2022. Parents were forbidden from feeding their children, witnesses said.
Some church members who fled Shakahola publicized their suffering there, and at one point fights broke out in the forest when outsiders on motorbikes attempted rescue operations, said Changawa Mangi Yaa, a village elder.
The rescue team had two motorcycles burnt in Shakahola but police did nothing beyond making brief arrests, Yah said, adding that he realised “Mackenzie was stronger than I realised”.
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