A Kenyan judge has started to deliver a verdict in a mass murder case involving doomsday preacher Paul Mackenzie.
Mackenzie and 29 of his followers are being charged with the murder of 191 people, all but one of them children.
His cult is alleged to have forced children to starve to death so that they could “meet Jesus”. His doomsday doctrine said that education was forbidden and modern medicine was considered “evil”.
Mackenzie and the 29 others have all pleaded not guilty to murder, repeatedly insisting that nobody was forced to die.
Mackenzie’s former head of security, Enos Amanya Ngala, was initially accused but then entered a plea deal and became a witness for the prosecution.
Mackenzie and other leaders of the cult also face a raft of other legal cases, including for terrorism, radicalisation and denying education to children.
But this is the first time the pastor will face a verdict on the most serious charges of murder.
Authorities said over 400 bodies were found in shallow graves in Shakahola forest near the Kenyan coast, where Mackenzie led his followers from across the country.
Seventeen men were hired from the nearby town for the horrifying task of digging up the shallow graves. Some were paid just $8 (£6) a day.
“Every grave we found had at least three bodies,” James, one of the gravediggers, told the BBC. “Some of the remains were of children as young as a few weeks old.”
“We once found 12 bodies of children in a line inside a grave. It was massive, the bodies were arranged like clothes. One on top of another.”
Gravediggers described some of the bodies of children as having had their “hands and legs tied and bodies wrapped in bedsheets”.
Although many of Mackenzie’s followers were from elsewhere in Kenya, some of the remains are of people who were familiar to the community because the people in the cult would often go to nearby Shakahola town for supplies and to fetch water from the River Galana which flows through the town.
“We would sometimes carry people on our motorbikes into the forest,” said Salim Karisa, another gravedigger. “But it was so planned and secretive that nobody could tell what was happening inside.”
Stephen Mwiti, 48, recounted losing all six of his children to the cult and seeing “many bald women and tens of children” surrounding Mackenzie in his house when he went to confront him. Mackenzie forbade make-up and hairstyles, so told women to shave off their hair or keep it unkempt.
Mwiti’s former wife is one of those accused alongside Mackenzie.
“If I met Pastor Mackenzie today, one of us will have to die,” told the BBC.
“All six of my children died in Shakahola forest,” Mwiti said, visibly emotional holding a photograph of his family. “I only found and buried the remains of my son Samuel.”
“This little thing here was the start of all my misery,” Mwiti said as he pointed at a dusty TV and cable box in his home in the coastal town of Malindi, 70km (43 miles) from Shakahola. It was from that TV that Mackenzie’s doctrine made it to his home.
The pastor established Good News International Ministries in 2003. Over the next 16 years, the church grew in popularity to draw thousands of followers in the church’s branches across Kenya.
His church ran a television station called Times TV which would broadcast his sermons from his church in Malindi.
His End Days sermons included conspiracy theories that described education as “evil”, healthcare as “against the doctrine” and digital identity cards as “the mark of the devil”. (BBC)