The Kenyan government has requested to detain Paul Mackenzie, the main suspect in a starvation cult trial, for 180 more days – or six months – to complete investigations into the case, where he is accused of causing the deaths of hundreds of people.
On Monday, the state, through the prosecution, also asked to detain Mackenzie’s 29 co-accused for a similar number of days.
The 30, who have been in custody for approximately five months, had appeared before a magistrate in the coastal town of Shanzu for plea-taking, but the prosecution said it had not gathered enough evidence to facilitate the charges.
The government says scientific examination and identification of 429 bodies would take at least 180 days. The state says getting DNA evidence is crucial in the case.
The government’s application for further detention of the suspects could not be heard, as the suspects’ lawyer, Wycliffe Makasembo, said Mackenzie had been taken ill.
Fatal starvation
The state’s application will be heard on October 12.
Mackenzie, who ran a church in the coastal town of Malindi, is accused of asking his followers to “starve themselves to death in order to meet Jesus Christ.”
At least 429 people reportedly died as a result of obeying the said-order, and their bodies retrieved from the expansive Shakahola forest in the coastal county of Kilifi.
The government has said that 360 of the exhumed bodies had “severely decomposed.”
The exhumation exercise, which has since been suspended, was conducted in phases, with the first bodies discovered in April this year.
The Kenyan government says Mackenzie and his co-accused are likely to face charges of mass murder, torture and terrorism.
Postmortem on some of the exhumed bodies indicated they had been strangled. A majority of the victims died as a result of starvation, according to the autopsies.
