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Kenya cult deaths: Church leader remains in jail

Kenya cult deaths: Church leader remains in jail

A Kenyan cult leader accused of ordering his followers to starve themselves to death will be detained by police until a hearing on Friday, a court ruled as investigators searched for more bodies in a forest where 101 corpses have already been unearthed. Kenyan authorities say the dead were members of the Good News International Church led by Paul Mackenzie, 50, who had predicted the world would end on April 15 and ordered his followers to kill themselves to be the first to go to heaven. The death toll stands at a total of 109 so far, with 101, mostly children, found…
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Kenyan occult deaths: kids starved, asphyxiated

Kenyan occult deaths: kids starved, asphyxiated

THE bodies of several children exhumed in eastern Kenya showed signs of starvation and in some cases asphyxiation, a government pathologist said, as investigators began the first autopsies on over 100 people linked to a doomsday cult. On Monday investigators said they had completed 10 autopsies, comprising nine children aged between 18 months and 10 years, and one female adult, from the 101 bodies discovered last month in shallow graves in Shakahola Forest, Kilifi County. Authorities say the dead were followers of the Good News International Church, led by pastor Paul Mackenzie, whom they accuse of instructing worshippers to starve…
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Kenya cult deaths: kids starved, asphyxiated

Kenya cult deaths: kids starved, asphyxiated

THE bodies of several children exhumed in eastern Kenya showed signs of starvation and in some cases asphyxiation, a government pathologist said, as investigators began the first autopsies on over 100 people linked to a doomsday cult. On Monday investigators said they had completed 10 autopsies, comprising nine children aged between 18 months and 10 years, and one female adult, from the 101 bodies discovered last month in shallow graves in Shakahola Forest, Kilifi County. Authorities say the dead were followers of the Good News International Church, led by pastor Paul Mackenzie, whom they accuse of instructing worshippers to starve…
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Kenyan death cult pastor arrested

Kenyan death cult pastor arrested

A Kenyan televangelist was arrested after reports of the "mass killing of his followers", the interior minister said, as authorities investigated scores of other deaths linked to a religious cult from the same region. As news of pastor Ezekiel Odero's detention spread, officials said the death toll had now reached 103 in the separate cult investigation that has shocked the nation and prompted calls for a crackdown on religious fringe groups. Odero, dressed in white robes and carrying a thick black book, did not respond to reporters' questions as he was escorted into a police station by a uniformed officer.…
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Kenyan father searches for wife and six children among dead cult members

Kenyan father searches for wife and six children among dead cult members

STEPHEN Mwiti was too distraught to go identify the bodies of his wife and six children among the corpses of dozens of cult members recovered from Shakahola forest and brought to a mortuary in Kenya's coastal town of Malindi. "My children are gone. The children who have been rescued, I went and had a look and I did not see my children," Mwiti said as he waved a photo of his wife and four of the children. He has been carrying the fading, dog-eared photo in a plastic bag for the last six months or so as he searched for…
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Factbox: Kenya starvation deaths latest in long list of cult tragedies

Factbox: Kenya starvation deaths latest in long list of cult tragedies

THE death toll among followers of a Kenyan cult called the Good News International Church, who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves, has risen to 89 and could rise further, Kenyan authorities said. The following are some of the deadliest cult-related incidents in recent history. UGANDA, MARCH 2000 A doomsday cult, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments, burns nearly 800 followers alive in a locked church after its prediction that the world would end at the start of 2000 fails to come true. Advertisement · Scroll to continue UNITED STATES, MARCH 1997 Thirty-nine members of…
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Kenya hunger cult deaths reach 89, minister prays survivors will ‘tell the story’

Kenya hunger cult deaths reach 89, minister prays survivors will ‘tell the story’

GEORGE OBULUTSA THE death toll among followers of a Kenyan cult who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves has risen to 89, Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said, calling for the group's leader to spend the rest of his life in prison. The toll has steadily risen in recent days as authorities have carried out exhumations of mass graves found in an 800-acre area of the Shakahola forest in eastern Kenya where the self-proclaimed Good News International Church was based. Most of the dead were recovered from shallow graves, while a small number were found alive and…
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Kenya police begin exhuming remains from suspected Christian cult graves

Kenya police begin exhuming remains from suspected Christian cult graves

HUMPHREY MALALO KENYAN police began exhuming remains from more than a dozen suspected graves in the east of the country thought to contain followers of a Christian cult who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves to death. On Thursday, homicide detectives marked out patches of earth with sticks and yellow tape in Shakahola forest in Kilifi county, near the location where police rescued 15 members of the Good News International Church last week, according to footage broadcast by Citizen TV. Police began exhuming bodies on Friday, said Charles Kamau, a detective in the nearby town of Malindi, without…
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Four Kenyans, told their work on Earth was done, fast to death, police say

Four Kenyans, told their work on Earth was done, fast to death, police say

FIFTEEN "radicalised" Kenyan Christians were rescued from a fast which began after they were told they were going to meet their maker, but four died during the rescue mission, police said. All 15 were members of the Good News International Church in the coastal county of Kilifi, police said. "In the process of rescuing the victims, four of them died," police said in an incident report. Charles Kamau, the criminal investigations officer for Malindi sub-county, said the 15 had been radicalised. "They starved after being radicalised by a certain member of a church who told them that their work in…
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