Kenyan President William Ruto on Monday compared the dozens who died of starvation among a pastor’s followers in the country’s south to the results of terrorist attacks, as the new death toll rose to 73.
He maintained that the pastor, Paul Makenzi, who is in police custody, should be in jail.
“What we are seeing… is akin to terrorism,” Ruto said. “Mr Makenzi… pretends and poses as a pastor when in reality he is a terrible criminal.”
Makenzi was arrested on suspicion of telling his followers to fast unto death to meet Jesus. A group of emaciated people were rescued alive, but some of them later died. Authorities then turned their attention to dozens of shallow graves marked with crosses on Makenzi’s 800-acre ranch.
The total death toll now stands at 73, with 26 new bodies exhumed on Monday, Malindi sub-county police chief John Kemboi told the Associated Press.
Kemboi said investigators had received reinforcements and were able to cover more ground. At least four people died after they and others were discovered starving to death at the Good News International Church last week.
A tip from the public led police to raid the pastor’s property in Malindi, where they found 15 emaciated people, including the four who later died. The followers said they were starving themselves as per the pastor’s instructions in order to “meet Jesus”.
/ AP
Police had said there were dozens of shallow graves scattered around Makenzi’s farm and began digging on Friday.
The Kenya Red Cross Society said on Sunday that 112 people had been reported missing from a tracing board set up in Malindi, where the pastor’s main church was located.
Makenzi remains in custody and a court allowed investigators to hold him for two weeks while the investigation into the deaths continues.
The pastor has already been arrested twice, in 2019 and in March of this year, in connection with the death of children. Each time, he was released on bail, and both cases are still going through court.
Local politicians have urged the court not to release him this time, denouncing the spread of cults in the Malindi area.
The sad case has captured national attention and the government has signaled the need for tighter control of religious denominations in a country where rogue pastors and fringe movements have been implicated in crime.
Home Affairs Minister Kithure Kindiki, who announced he would visit the site on Tuesday, called the case “the clearest abuse of the constitutionally enshrined human right to freedom of worship”.
But attempts to regulate religion in the Christian-majority country have been fiercely opposed in the past as attempts to undermine constitutional guarantees for a separation between church and state.
Last year, the body of a British woman who died was exhumed at the home of a different cult leader while on vacation in Kenya, the family’s lawyer said. Luftunisa Kwandwalla, 44, was visiting the coastal city of Mombasa when she died in August 2020, and was buried a day later, but her family has claimed foul play.
AFP contributed to this report.
