Five bodies found on Kenyan coast, linked to infamous starvation cult

NAIROBI - At least five bodies, including two children, exhumed on Kenya's coast are linked to an infamous starvation cult that came to light in 2023, police told AFP on Friday.

More than 400 people died in one of the world's worst cult-related tragedies, which became known as the "Shakahola Forest Massacre", discovered inland from the Indian Ocean town of Malindi.

The case rocked the country and made headlines globally, with self-proclaimed pastor Paul Mackenzie facing trial in the coastal city of Mombasa. He has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of manslaughter.

Officers had excavated at least 27 sites further along the coast from Shakahola at a five-acre site near Binzaro village in Kilifi county's Chakama area, Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officer Robert Kiinge told AFP.

"We retrieved five bodies," he said.

Kiinge said that the majority of the remains were in a state of advanced decomposition, indicating they had been in the ground for over a year, although he said one may have been buried as recently as seven to eight months ago.

"We had two remains of children," he said, estimating their ages as between five and seven years old.

"Looking at what we are working on now there is no doubt there is connection with the old Shakahola," he said.

Eleven people have been taken into custody, Kiinge said, although three of them are being treated as victims.

"The people we have in custody today are followers of Mackenzie," he said.

The investigation was ongoing, Kiinge added, noting that until scheduled post-mortems they would not speculate on the cause of death.

The fresh discoveries come after a Mombasa court earlier this month adjourned the ongoing case of the Shakahola preacher, Mackenzie, citing the discovery of new evidence.

Shakahola led the government to move towards tighter control of fringe religious groups, after accusations that it could have prevented the deaths.

Efforts to regulate religion in the majority-Christian country have been fiercely opposed in the past as undermining constitutional guarantees of the division between Church and state.