‘We tried to stop her’: Kenyan teenager tells how cult starved his mother
GuardianApr 30, 2023
Court documents filed on Monday indicate that autopsies on corpses found in mass graves linked to a religious cult in Kenya have revealed missing organs, raising suspicion they could have been victims of a well-coordinated organ trafficking ring.
This comes as police have found more than a hundred dead bodies, most of them children, in 30 sites in the African country since the self-styled Pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie — who founded the Good News International Church in 2003 — turned himself into police after the first corpses were recovered in a remote forest around the tourist town of Malindi.
Nthenge Mackenzie took advantage of the faith of regular Kenyans to achieve his personal, sadistic goals. He stripped men, women, and children of their identities and stole them from their families. While the deceased cannot be brought back to life, some semblance of justice can be found by prosecuting everyone responsible for these heinous crimes.
While Mackenzie is certainly the primary culprit in this tragedy, Kenyan investigators should also look into the role played by the police. One father filed a report after his son became obsessed with the cult, but police defended Mackenzie. If officers had acted when they first heard of the church's practices, that victim — among many others — would most likely still be alive today.