Shakahola: Paul Mackenzie found guilty of 191 murders, Mombasa High Court rejects fasting theory

The Mombasa High Court found Kenyan preacher Paul Nthenge Mackenzie guilty of 191 murders on October 19, 2026. The victims recognized by the court include 190 children and one adult who died in the Shakahola forest in Kilifi County, on the Kenyan coast, reports Citizen Digital. The verdict comes three years after the discovery of the first graves.

Judge Diana Kavedza Mochache read her judgment from 9:30 a.m. to 6:29 p.m., according to The Eastleigh Voice. She concluded that Mackenzie had ordered his followers to starve themselves and their children to death, and that several of his co-defendants had carried out these orders. The number of people convicted alongside him varies according to Kenyan media: 28 according to Citizen Digital, and 30 according to The Eastleigh Voice.

Not a religious fast, but a system of control

The central point of the judgment is the rejection of the defense's argument. The court dismissed the idea that the victims had voluntarily fasted to death, indicates The Eastleigh Voice. The evidence examined shows deaths by starvation, but also by asphyxiation, manual strangulation, and suffocation. The judge found that physical and psychological torture had been inflicted on the victims, including children, within a hierarchical organization. She ruled that these murders constituted a broader attack directed against the civilian population of Shakahola.

During the trial, the prosecution described a "structured hierarchy of death": children first, then adolescents, women, and finally men, according to Citizen Digital. More than 120 witnesses were heard. Mackenzie, who had pleaded not guilty to the 191 counts of murder in 2024, still faces separate charges for manslaughter and terrorism, which he also contested. The sentencing is expected on November 6, 2026, specifies Citizen Digital.

More than 400 bodies, and victims still without names

The case judged covers only a portion of the tragedy. The events date back to the 2021-2023 period, and the bodies were exhumed in 2023 from shallow graves near Malindi. More than 400 bodies were found in the area, according to Africanews, and some victims have never been identified. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights had put forward the figure of 429 deaths in 2024, reports Citizen Digital. In January 2026, new proceedings were opened following the discovery of 52 bodies in a neighboring village.

For the families, who had been waiting for justice for three years, this verdict is the first delivered on the core of the events, notes Africanews. It also revives a Kenyan debate that had been left hanging: that of the regulation of religious organizations, whose Shakahola sermons had not been flagged by any authority before the graves were opened. An African court has judged, in Mombasa, one of the most significant cases in the country's judicial history; it remains to be seen whether the State will address the consequences of its own lack of oversight.