A Kenyan court has convicted preacher Paul Nthenge Mackenzie and 29 co-accused of murder over 191 deaths linked to the Shakahola settlement. The victims in the charges were 190 children and one adult, according to reporting on the verdict delivered in Mombasa on Monday.
The judgment is specific to those murder counts. It is not a conviction covering every death recorded in the wider Shakahola investigation, which involved hundreds of recovered remains. Separate proceedings involving terrorism, radicalisation and children’s education remain distinct from the murder trial decided on 19 October.
Judge Diana Mochache read a lengthy High Court judgment setting out the court’s assessment of the evidence and the defendants’ roles. Mackenzie and the other accused had denied the murder charges. Monday’s findings establish criminal responsibility in this trial, rather than leaving the prosecution’s case merely as an allegation.
Deaths linked to religious settlement
The case centred on Good News International, the movement led by Mackenzie, and its base in Shakahola forest in Kilifi County. Prosecutors said followers were directed to fast to death in the belief that they would meet Jesus. The defendants denied that anyone had been forced to die.
The BBC reported that the judge described followers as believing Mackenzie was Jesus’s mouthpiece. It also reported the judgment’s account of burials being referred to as weddings. These descriptions come from the court’s examination of the movement and its practices, not from an independent claim about every person who lived in the settlement.
The evidence included accounts of deprivation and coercion. One witness described a newborn who died after the mother was reportedly prevented from nursing the baby and instructed to fast. The BBC also reported an account that those resisting the fasting directive could be forced through violence. The judgment addressed responsibility for the deaths, not simply the presence of unusual religious beliefs.
A former head of security, Enos Amanya Ngala, who was initially accused, entered a plea agreement and became a prosecution witness, according to the BBC. His position is therefore different from that of the 30 defendants convicted on Monday. His testimony formed part of the evidence considered during the trial.
Murder counts differ from wider death toll
The number of deaths included in the verdict needs to be distinguished from the overall Shakahola toll. Earlier reporting about exhumations, identification and the wider investigation referred to much larger totals. Those figures describe different stages and strands of the inquiry, rather than the number of murder counts resolved by this judgment.
Daily Nation reporting from November 2025, citing evidence from a government analyst, said 453 bodies had been exhumed at that point and 69 matched through DNA, leaving 384 unidentified. Those were figures reported at that date. They should not be presented as a new forensic total confirmed by Monday’s ruling.
The identification process illustrates a separate difficulty for families and investigators. A court can determine responsibility for the charged murders without resolving the identity of every recovered person or establishing the fate of everyone reported missing. The criminal trial and the work of identifying remains answer different questions.
The distinction is especially important in a case involving children and multiple members of families. Reporting on the identification process has described difficulties matching remains. Monday’s verdict does not by itself establish that every body recovered during the investigation has been identified or that every death was included in these proceedings.
Other cases remain separate
Mackenzie and other movement leaders face separate legal proceedings, the BBC reported. Allegations in those cases must still be distinguished from the findings made in the murder trial. A conviction in one case is not a substitute for a verdict on unresolved charges, even when the proceedings arise from the same wider events.
For the families connected to the 191 victims in the murder counts, the judgment is a major development in the court process. For the wider Shakahola investigation, it is one strand of a larger judicial and forensic accounting. The confirmed outcome on Monday is the murder conviction of Mackenzie and 29 co-accused in the case concerning 190 children and one adult.
