The toll of the “Shakahola massacre”, the name of a Kenyan forest where an evangelical sect that practiced extreme fasting met, rose to 403 dead on Monday after the discovery of 12 new bodies, a regional official announced.
“Our medical-legal team was able to exhume 12 bodies today,” Monday, the prefect of the coastal region, Rhoda Onyancha, told the press, adding in a message to AFP that the “total balance” is “403 dead.” .
To date, 35 suspects have been detained in connection with the so-called “Shakahola massacre”. Almost all the dead of the “Shakahola massacre” have been exhumed from graves and mass graves in that forest, except for a few who died in hospital due to their serious condition.
The autopsies of more than a hundred bodies showed that, although all showed signs of starvation, the corpses of at least three minors and one adult also had signs of strangulation and suffocation.
The first investigations by the Police suggest that the faithful were forced to continue fasting even if they wanted to abandon it.
On May 10, the Shanzu court ordered an extension for thirty days (beginning the count on May 3) the detention of the leader of the sect who allegedly persuaded the victims to fast, Pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, along with his woman and sixteen other suspects.
On May 2, Nthenge and the other detainees were released by the court in the tourist coastal city of Malindi, after the Prosecutor’s Office stated its intention to file terrorism charges against them, something for which that court declared itself. incompetent.
However, the pastor and his henchmen were arrested minutes later and taken to the Shanzu court, some 120 kilometers away. The president of Kenya, William Ruto, apologized on May 14 on behalf of his government for not having been able to prevent the deaths.
Nthenge, in police custody since April 14, leads the Good News International Church. An ecstasy driver, the pastor was already arrested last March after being accused of the death of two children in similar circumstances, but he was released on bail.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP and EFE
#Balance #victims #sect #fasted #Christ #exceeds #deaths