First Kenya cult massacre bodies released

MALINDI, Kenya: Kenyan authorities on Tuesday began releasing the bodies of victims of a doomsday starvation cult to distraught relatives, almost a year since the discovery of mass graves in a grisly case that shocked the world.

One tearful family received four bodies that were loaded into a hearse from a morgue in the Indian Ocean town of Malindi, said an AFP correspondent at the scene.

They are the first bodies to be handed over to their relatives for burial after months of painstaking work to identify them using DNA.

“It is a relief that we finally have the bodies but it is also disheartening that they are only skeletons,” William Ponda, 32, told AFP, saying he lost his mother, brother, sister-in-law and nephew in the tragedy.

Chief government pathologist Johansen Oduor and head of criminal investigations Martin Nyuguto confirmed the handing over of the four bodies in Malindi and said they were expecting more to follow on Wednesday and Thursday.

Hundreds of bodies, including those of children, have been dug up from the shallow mass graves discovered in April last year in a remote wilderness inland from Malindi.

Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie is alleged to have incited his followers to starve to death in order to ‘meet Jesus” in what has been dubbed the “Shakahola forest massacre’.

The former taxi driver turned messiah has pleaded not guilty to 191 counts of murder, manslaughter and terrorism. He has also been charged with child torture and cruelty.

So far, 34 of the 429 bodies exhumed between April and October last year have been positively identified.

While starvation caused many deaths, some of the bodies, including those of children, showed signs of death by asphyxiation, strangulation or bludgeoning, according to government autopsies.

Families have had to endure a painful wait for the bodies of their loved-ones after the DNA profiling was delayed by lack of reagents and equipment.

Roseline Odede, chair of the state-backed Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), lamented the slow process of identifying the victims and the release of the bodies.

“There are 390 plus bodies yet to be identified positively. Going at this rate we are going to be here for 10 years,” she told reporters in Malindi. “The government must intentionally commit resources towards this process so that we are able to give closure to families.”