More than 109 bodies were discovered, in what is now called “the Shakahola massacre”. All were followers of the International Church of the Good News where the pastor preached extreme fasting as a way to meet God.
The autopsy and identification of more than a hundred bodies found in a forest in southeastern Kenya, where the followers of a sect gathered, began on Monday morning, announced the Minister of Health. ‘Kithure Kindiki interior.
“The process of autopsying the bodies begins immediately,” Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki told reporters outside the morgue of the district hospital in the coastal town of Malindi, calling the operations “a crucial step. “.
“This process should take about a week, if all goes well,” he said.
“Maybe not starved”
Identification operations by DNA sampling are being carried out simultaneously, the full results of which may not be known for “months”, added the head of the national forensic services, Dr Johansen Oduor.
A total of 109 people, including a majority of children, died in the forest of Shakahola where the followers of a sect called the International Church of Good News met, according to a still provisional assessment.
The search for bodies and mass graves in this forest has been “temporarily stopped” due to heavy rains, Kithure Kindiki said on Monday.
Autopsies should determine the causes of death. Investigators suspect that many followers died of starvation after following the precepts of the sect’s self-proclaimed pastor, Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who advocated fasting to death “to meet Jesus”.
But “the preliminary reports we are getting indicate that some victims may not have starved to death,” Kithure Kindiki said on Friday, indicating that some bodies bore injuries.
Government measures
Shocked after the revelation of what is now called the ‘Shakahola Forest Massacre’, Kenya saw the case take an unexpected twist on Thursday with the arrest of one of the country’s most famous pastors, Ezekiel Odero. , suspected of being linked to it.
“There is credible information linking the exhumed bodies (…) to Shakahola” with “several innocent and vulnerable followers (of the church of Odero, editor’s note) who would have died”, say the prosecutors in a court document .
The two pastors, currently detained, are due to appear in courts in two different cities on Tuesday.
President Wiliam Ruto’s government on April 24 promised action against those who “use religion to advance a shady and unacceptable ideology”, comparing them to “terrorists”.
The Head of State will announce this week the creation of “a working group to deal (…) with the way in which we supervise religious activities in our country”, Kithure Kindiki announced on Monday.
He will be responsible for studying how to preserve “the sacred right to freedom of worship, opinion and belief”, without however allowing “criminals to abuse this right to injure, kill, torture and starve people”. , he added.
