Nairobi (EFE).- The number of alleged members of a Christian sect who fasted to death in a forest in southern Kenya to meet with Jesus Christ has risen to 201 after the authorities found 22 new bodies this Saturday, the Police reported.
The regional police commissioner for the Kenyan coast, Rhoda Onyancha, declared at a press conference that the operation will resume next Monday, after a week in which the number has not stopped rising as progress is made in the excavation of the common pits.
Onyanch reported that one more suspect was arrested this Saturday, bringing the total number of suspects involved to 26.
The regional police commissioner also said the number of people reported missing had risen by one since Friday, to 610.
The number of people rescued alive remains at 72.
Almost all the dead of the so-called “Shakahola massacre” have been exhumed from graves and mass graves found in that forest, with the exception of a few who died in hospital due to their serious condition.
Starvation, strangulation and suffocation in the corpses of the Kenyan sect
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.
Likewise, the first investigations by the Police indicate that they forced the faithful to continue fasting even if they wanted to abandon it.
Last Wednesday, the Shanzu court, in the coastal city of Mombasa, ordered an extension for thirty days (beginning the count on May 3) the detention of the sect leader who allegedly persuaded the victims to fast, Pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, along with his wife and 16 other suspects.
On May 2, the court in the tourist coastal city of Malindi released Nthenge and the other detainees, after the Prosecutor’s Office stated its intention to file terrorism charges against them, something for which that court declared itself incompetent. .
However, minutes later they arrested the pastor and his henchmen and transferred them to the Shanzu court, some 120 kilometers away, where the police unsuccessfully requested authorization to detain them for another 90 days.
Last week, the President of Kenya, William Ruto, appointed a commission of inquiry chaired by Judge Jessie Lesiit to clarify the facts and determine the administrative or security negligence that could have occurred.
Nthenge, in police custody since April 14, leads the Good News International Church.
Last March they already arrested the pastor accused of the death of two children in similar circumstances, but he was released on bail.