Authorities exhuming bodies at the mass-grave site in Shakahola, Kenya. 
| Photo Credit: AFP

A year after school teacher Francis Wanje lost eight family members to a Kenyan doomsday cult, he is still reckoning with the horror and haunted by unanswered questions.

His daughter was one of 429 people whose bodies were exhumed last year from shallow graves in a sun-scorched forest near the Indian Ocean town of Malindi. “It has been a very tough journey,” Mr. Wanje said after he received the remains of four relatives last month, including his daughter and grandson. “We are still hoping that perhaps in the near future, we are going to get the other four,” Mr. Wanje said.

The victims were lured by former taxi driver turned evangelical pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie into the Shakahola forest which he promoted as a refuge from the impending end of the world. Mackenzie, a preacher who had run afoul of the law on numerous occasions, is accused of inducing them to starve to death to ascend to heaven. While many people died of starvation, government pathologists have said that others, including children, died of asphyxiation and strangulation.

The case first came to public attention a year ago this week after Mr. Wanje set out on a private rescue mission following a tip-off from a former member of Mackenzie’s Good News International Church.

“The senseless murders could have been avoided if everyone (had) moved with urgency.”

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said in a report released last month that the police ignored multiple warnings about the cult.

Kenyan government officials ignored “credible reports” that could have prevented the death of more than 400 suspected doomsday cult members, a state-funded human rights watchdog said on Friday.

The piles of human remains were discovered in April 2023 in Shakahola forest, a vast bushland that lies inland from the Indian Ocean town of Malindi.

The government is due to start releasing the exhumed bodies to relatives for burial next week after the DNA profiling was delayed by lack of reagents and equipment.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), a state-backed body, criticised security officers in Malindi for “gross abdication of duty and negligence”.

“They not only failed to be proactive in collecting and acting on intelligence to forestall the Shakahola massacre but also unjustifiably failed to act on credible and actionable reports,” KNCHR chairwoman Roseline Odede said.

Self-professed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie is alleged to have incited his followers to starve to death in order to “meet Jesus”.

While starvation appears to be the main cause of death, autopsies carried out by the government found that some victims — including children — had been strangled, beaten or suffocated.

Between April and October last year, a total of 429 bodies were exhumed from shallow graves, while 67 adults and 25 children were rescued, according to government records.