As Kenyan cult starvation deaths hit 200, mass exhumations are being done.

The number of people who died because of the cult in Kenya went up to 201 on Saturday, when 22 more bodies were found in the Shakahola forest. The bodies showed signs of being strangled and starved.

This week, officials told the court that 21 of the bodies that were dug up were missing organs. They also said that they expected to find more bodies in the next few days.

Since April, when the mass graves were found, the bodies of children have also been found in them.

Police say that most of the people whose bodies were found near Malindi on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast were members of Paul Nthenge Mackenzie’s Good News International Church. Mackenzie was a self-styled pastor and leader of a cult who supposedly told people to starve to death so they could “meet Jesus.”

Still, 600 people have not been found.

Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, who calls himself a priest, goes to court in Mombasa on May 5, 2023, in front of the Shanzu law courts. — AFP
Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, who calls himself a priest, goes to court in Mombasa on May 5, 2023, in front of the Shanzu law courts. — AFP
The minister said that he had closed his church in 2019 and moved to his property in a wooded area to farm.

Last week, the results of tests on hundreds of bodies were made public. They showed that people died from things like strangulation, suffocation, and injuries caused by blunt objects.

At the end of the month, Mackenzie, his wife, and 16 other suspects will go to court.

Saturday, Coast regional commissioner Rhoda Onyancha said that 26 people had been arrested and that 610 people had been reported missing by their families.

“Today, our forensic team was able to dig up 22 bodies, but no one has been saved,” Onyancha told reporters.

Pastor Mackenzie is said to have told his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could go to heaven before April 15, the day he said the world would end.

Friday, 29 more bodies were found in the mass graves. Among them were 12 children.

On May 2, 2023, at the Malindi law court in Kilifi county, relatives of people who died in the so-called Shakahola forest massacre watch as priest Paul Nthenge Mackenzie is charged. — AFP
On May 2, 2023, at the Malindi law court in Kilifi county, relatives of people who died in the so-called “Shakahola forest massacre” watch as minister Paul Nthenge Mackenzie is charged. — AFP
Hussein Mohamed, a spokesman for the president, said, “William Ruto also set up a task force to look at the rules for religious organizations.”

When the prosecutor went to court in Mombasa on Friday, he asked the judge to keep Mackenzie in jail for another 90 days so that the probe could go on.

The judge was reported as saying that he would decide on the prosecution’s request next Wednesday and that Mackenzie would have to stay in jail until then.

Mackenzie told the media that he and some of his friends were not getting food in prison while he held his 2-year-old daughter.

The prosecutors disputed these, and on Tuesday, his lawyer told the press that his client was eating.