Eight new bodies were exhumed on Wednesday in the Shakahola forest in eastern Kenya, bringing to 98 the death toll in a sect that advocated extreme fasting to "meet Jesus".
After announcing on Tuesday evening a pause in the search for mass graves to conduct autopsies and unclog the morgues, the authorities resumed the excavations on Wednesday morning.
“We had a lot of difficulty today with the rain but in the end we had eight bodies out,” a police source told AFP, adding: “We will continue operations tomorrow” Thursday.
Research has so far found 39 people alive in the vast 325-hectare "bush" area surveyed by investigators, said the prefect of the region Rhoda Onyancha earlier in the day.
A total of 22 people were taken into custody, she added.
Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, the self-proclaimed "pastor" of this group called Eglise Internationale de la Bonne Nouvelle (Good News International Church), is in prison after turning himself in to police on April 14, during the first police operations in the forest. He is due in court on May 2.
The revelation of what is now called the "Shakahola Forest Massacre" has caused shock in Kenya and sparked widespread calls for a crackdown on sects in the predominantly Christian country.
Families of cult members have flocked to Malindi City Hospital Mortuary to learn the fate of their loved ones.
Among them, Issa Ali is waiting, without much hope, to find out if his mother is among the bodies discovered. A follower of the sect, she took him to the Shakahola forest in 2020, before his father took him out last year.
"The last time I saw my mother was in February. She was so weak," said the 16-year-old.
Hassan Musa, an official with the Kenya Red Cross, told AFP that 311 people, "including 150 minors", have been reported missing to the organization in Malindi.
"These are people mainly from Kenya, but also from Tanzania and Nigeria. Some have been missing for years," he said.
Investigators discover with horror every day the scale of this "massacre", in which the majority of children appear, three sources close to the investigation told AFP.
According to Hussein Khalid, director of the NGO Haki Africa which alerted the police to the activities of Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, the "pastor" had recommended starving the children first, then the women and finally the men before the end of the world who was supposed to come in June.
According to him, between 50 and 60 percent of the bodies recovered are children, found wrapped in cotton fabrics in shallow graves.
"We don't know how many mass graves, how many bodies, we can find," Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said on Tuesday, adding that the crimes committed were serious enough to warrant terrorism charges against Paul Mackenzie Nthenge.
Kenyan President William Ruto has vowed to take action against self-proclaimed pastors such as Mr Nthenge "who want to use religion to promote shady and unacceptable ideologies".
This case also raises many questions about the flaws of the police and judicial authorities, who had known the "pastor" for several years.
He was first arrested in 2017, accused of "radicalization" because he advocated not sending children to school, claiming that education was not recognized in the Bible.
He was arrested again last month, after two starving children were killed by their sect-linked parents. He had dismissed the charges and was released on bail of 100,000 Kenyan shillings (about 670 euros).
04/26/2023 22:54:35 - Malindi (Kenya) (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
