Global Courant 2023-05-01 17:20:33
Kenyan authorities say they will check whether some of the 109 bodies recovered so far are missing organs.
Pathologists in Kenya have begun autopsies on more than 100 bodies linked to a religious cult whose leader allegedly ordered them to starve themselves to be the first to go to heaven, officials say.
One hundred and nine followers of the Good News International Church, based in the Shakahola Forest in eastern Kenya, are known to have died. Authorities have recovered 101 bodies from shallow graves since April 21, while eight cult members were found alive but later died. So far 44 people have been rescued.
Most of the bodies found so far are children, Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said on Friday.
“We are going to do the autopsies in teams,” chief government pathologist Johansen Oduor, who heads the post-mortem examinations, said at a news conference on Monday, the day the autopsies began.
Oduor said the government was collecting DNA samples from those who reported missing relatives and would do the matching in a process that would take at least a month.
Kindiki said the autopsies will look at all possibilities, including whether any of the bodies had missing organs.
The deaths are among the worst cult-related tragedies in recent historyand the toll is expected to rise further as the Kenya Red Cross says more than 300 people have been reported missing.
The shocking discovery has been dubbed the Shakahola Forest Massacre by government officials.
Hussein Khalid, a member of Haki Africa, the rights group that informed police of the church’s actions, told AFP news agency he believed some church members were still hiding from authorities in the nearby forest.
“This indicates the magnitude of this problem, which clearly shows that there are still many who are still out there … potentially dying any second,” Khalid said.
He called on the government to send soldiers to help with the search so believers could be found before starving themselves to death.
Cult leader Paul Mackenzie has been in police custody since April 14, along with 14 cult members. Local media reports that he is refusing food and water.
The controversial leader of the cult in Kilifi, Paul Mackenzie, has gone on hunger strike in police cells.
— NTV Kenya (@ntvkenya) April 22, 2023
Mackenzie has not made a public comment. The Reuters news agency spoke to two lawyers acting on Mackenzie’s behalf, but both declined to comment on the allegations against him.
On Sunday, President William Ruto said he would appoint a judicial inquiry commission this week to investigate what happened in Shakahola.
