While Kenyan public opinion already seems to have forgotten about one of the most regrettable episodes in the country's history and the relatives of more than 450 people are still waiting for certainty that among the decomposed bodies exhumed from mass graves in Shakahola Forest are their long-lost loved ones, disturbing new twists are emerging from the investigations of investigators who are shedding light on what has been going on since last April just a few dozen kilometers from the white beaches of Malindi and Watamu, where no one ever suspected that the lucid madness of a preacher could have led to a full-blown massacre.

More than 450 followers of the "International Church of the Good News," renamed the "Fasting Sect," found dead, another 263 yet to be recovered, 97 people rescued in a state of decay, and 37 arrested, including, of course, the self-styled pastor who asked his followers to abstain from food and drink "so that they could see Jesus in heaven before the end of the world arrives."
We had already covered this, and talked about how naiveté, good faith, ignorance, and lack of solid and reassuring references from society could have driven so many people, not only desperate but also from the Kenyan small and middle class, to follow the dictates of such a guru.

In recent days, as The Standard newspaper reports, much more has been discovered: in the forest on the way to Tsavo National Park, 214 "torture rooms" were found where, according to government investigators, followers were not only forced to fast, but were tortured and in some cases directly killed. "It is clear that they were forced to fast and were ordered not to break their fast and to avoid being discovered by outsiders," said one of the investigators, adding that pieces of cloth, ropes and other instruments were recovered in the alleged torture rooms, which were described as "horrible objects." Autopsies on many of the victims revealed signs of strangulation and blows received, while from testimonies of herders and villagers near Shakahola, some of Mackenzie's followers, and particularly the women, were tied up and guarded by machete-wielding men to prevent them from escaping and obtaining food.

A stone's throw away from the vacations of thousands of citizens, including Kenyans, unaware of anything, for at least three months one of the most horrific carnage in modern Kenya took place, in the name of a god borrowed from a probable serial killer among the most heinous ever to appear on the scene of a country that, since the raids of the Mau Mau rebels more than sixty years ago, carried away by the vision of independence but nonetheless protagonists of bloody deeds, has always mostly shown its peaceful side.