Nairobi (EFE)
According to the latest official data confirmed by the regional police commissioner for the Kenyan coast, Rhoda Onyancha, and collected late yesterday by local media, 613 people have been reported missing so far and the number of those rescued alive amounts to 95.
After the start of the fourth phase of exhumations on Monday, the Kenyan Interior Minister, Kithure Kindiki, indicated that at least forty new mass graves have been identified and are pending to be opened in the Shakahola forest, in the coastal county of Kilifi. .
“We lost many Kenyans whose sin was to follow and trust a person they believed to be a man of God (…) We saw families of six and seven buried in one grave,” Kindiki lamented.
Opening of mass graves in a forest
The opening of graves continues after, on June 27, the chief pathologist of the Government, Johansen Oduor, indicated that, of the 338 bodies examined to date, 117 were minors and 201 adults, while 20 were in too advanced a state of decomposition to determine age.
Almost all the corpses of the so-called “Shakahola massacre” have been exhumed from graves and mass graves in that forest, of more than 320 hectares.
Autopsies show signs of starvation, strangulation and asphysia
The autopsies carried out so far have shown that, although all the bodies showed signs of starvation, some of them, especially those of children, also had signs of strangulation and suffocation.
In this sense, the first investigations by the Police suggest that the faithful were forced to continue fasting even if they wanted to abandon it.
At least 37 people have been arrested
At least 37 suspects have been arrested so far for these events, which have shocked the country, including the alleged leader of the sect, Pastor Paul Mackenzie, and his wife, Rhoda Maweu.
The judge of the Shanzu court, in the coastal city of Mombasa (south), Yusuf Shikanda, decided last week to keep Mackenzie in police custody, while he granted his wife bail.
In total, of the thirty suspects who remained in pretrial detention, the magistrate allowed eleven to regain their freedom within a period of three days and established that the rest would continue to be held for sixty more days, whose count began on June 2, while investigations continue.
Research since June
In mid-June, the Prosecutor’s Office reported the death of one of the suspects after having held a hunger strike during his detention and after Judge Shikanda ordered the transfer of Mackenzie and the others from police stations to the jail of the city of Malindi (south).
The magistrate made that decision after the request of the Prosecutor’s Office in the face of the weakness of some suspects who supported the hunger strike, so that they were forced to eat.
Those who have not stopped eating are Mackenzie and one of his assistants, according to the information provided in court.
Mackenzie, 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.