After more than nine months since the start of the investigation and his arrest, the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Kenya has finally laid charges against the controversial Malindi preacher Paul Mackenzie, who is suspected along with 94 others of his collaborators and alleged accomplices, of the death of at least 429 of his followers, including many children, in the so-called 'Shakahola massacre'.

Mackenzie, who for years had run the 'International Church of the Good News', which he had founded in the coastal town, had two years ago gathered a group of his followers in the Shakahola forest, about 80 km from Malindi on the road to the Tsavo National Park, and had foretold the imminent end of the world, convincing them to fast in order to be found clean and ready to meet Jesus in paradise, because on earth the devil would take over.

Many of the faithful, according to investigators, had renounced their possessions and left their relatives behind, handing everything over to him in order to obtain a hut in the Shakahola forest where they could serenely await his ascension.
Mackenzie's arrest dates back to April 2023, when some relatives of victims confessed that their relatives were in the forest and feared for their sect.

Since then, little by little, corpses piled up in mass graves, some in an advanced state of decomposition, have been exhumed and, until last August, dozens of people undergoing the fast were also saved. Among them were also numerous children. DNA tests have only been able to identify a few of the victims, and the Kenyan Red Cross believes the final number of missing followers is 613.

Mackenzie, after an ultimatum from the Shanzu court to the prosecution that was due to expire on 23 January, is now formally charged with murder, assault, terrorism, facilitating the commission of a terrorist act and child torture. With him also the 94 alleged accomplices.
In the next few days, an end may be put to one of the most regrettable episodes in recent years in the whole of East Africa, in which religious extremism, beliefs and speculation by modern-day fraudsters have intersected to the point of mass murder consequences.