A Kenyan court on Friday sentenced a religious cult leader to 200 years in prison after he was convicted of killing 190 children and adults after inciting them to starve themselves to death in the hope of "meeting Jesus."
Last month, a court in the coastal city of Mombasa overlooking the Indian Ocean convicted Paul McKenzie, who claims to be a pastor and leader of the Doomsday cult, along with 28 other defendants, of killing 190 children and adults between January 2021 and September 2023.
In 2023, hundreds of bodies were found in remote areas near the coast of Melandi in the south of the country, and while McKenzie was sentenced on Friday to 200 years in prison, 26 of the other 28 defendants were sentenced to prison terms that ranged from 100 to 160 years, and two more were sentenced to ten years in prison.
McKenzie, who also faces charges of manslaughter and terrorism in separate cases, developed a method of starving his followers to death, in a specific order of the age groups that were to die first, according to what survivors testified to be.
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