After the discovery of more than a hundred bodies in a Kenyan forest, autopsies revealed the absence of certain organs in several victims. Investigators suspect “well-coordinated organ trafficking”.
Some corpses found in a forest in southeastern Kenya, where members of an evangelical sect practicing extreme fasting gathered, had missing organs, according to a court document seen by AFP on Tuesday, raising suspicions of “trafficking of organs”.
More than a hundred bodies, the majority of them children, have so far been found in the investigation into “the Shakahola forest massacre”, the revelation of which has caused fear and incomprehension in this religious country of ‘East Africa.
Strangled, beaten or suffocated victims
According to autopsies carried out on 112 bodies, most of the victims died of starvation, probably after having followed the sermons of Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, self-proclaimed pastor of the International Church of Good News who advocated fasting “to meet Jesus”.
Some victims, including children, were however strangled, beaten or suffocated, forensic operations chief Johansen Oduor said last week.
But the autopsies also “revealed missing organs on some of the bodies (…) exhumed”, indicates a court document consulted on Tuesday.
Pastor’s bank accounts frozen
In this document dated Monday, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) evokes “a well-coordinated trafficking in human organs involving several actors”, without further details.
The DCI requested the freezing of the bank accounts of the famous pastor Ezekiel Odero, arrested on April 28 in this case and released on bail on Thursday. This influential pastor received “huge cash transactions”, according to the DCI, from sums paid by followers to Mackenzie who had asked them to sell their properties.
A Nairobi court on Monday ordered the freezing of more than 20 accounts belonging to Ezekiel Odero for 30 days.
“One of the worst tragedies our country has ever known”
The search for bodies, suspended due to bad weather, resumed on Tuesday in Shakahola. Investigators were digging around twenty new mass graves there, which “could contain several victims”, said the Minister of the Interior, Kithure Kindiki, present on the spot.
“I fear that we have many more graves in this forest and that leads us to conclude that this was a highly organized crime,” the minister added, adding that 65 people have so far been rescued alive. .
“What we have here in Shakahola is one of the worst tragedies our country has ever seen,” he said.
Paul Nthenge Mackenzie prosecuted for “terrorism”
A former taxi driver who became a pastor in the early 2000s, Paul Nthenge Mackenzie will be prosecuted for “terrorism”, prosecutors announced on May 2. A Mombasa city court is due to rule on Wednesday on extending the detention of his and 17 co-defendants, including his wife, for 90 days.
This massacre has revived the debate on the supervision of worship in Kenya, a predominantly Christian country which has 4,000 “churches”, according to official figures.
This scandal also placed the authorities under the fire of criticism for not having prevented the actions of Pastor Mackenzie, yet arrested several times for his extreme sermons.
