The burials in a Kenyan forest were called weddings, and the dead were celebrated as having wed Jesus.

Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge was convicted of murdering 190 children and one adult by a Kenyan court on Monday, Oct. 19. The court also found 28 of his co-defendants guilty.

Justice Diana Kavedza spent eight hours delivering her judgment against Mackenzie, who is in his early 50s. The convicted defendants had pleaded not guilty, insisting throughout the trial that nobody was forced to die. Shakahola forest, in Kilifi County, was where the 191 deaths took place between January 2021 and September 2023, prosecutors told the court, calling the proceedings one of Kenya’s most consequential criminal trials.

Pre-sentence reports are due in court Oct. 30, with sentencing set for Nov. 6.

Stephen Mwiti, 48, lost all six of his children in Shakahola forest, and searchers recovered the remains of only one, his son Samuel, whom he buried. His former wife is among those convicted alongside Mackenzie. “I’m a happy man, that all persons have been convicted,” Mwiti told the BBC outside court.

Too Young to Consent to Death

Kavedza rejected the argument that children who kept fasting until death had decided on their own. She found that children between ages six and 10 lacked the abstract reasoning to grasp that death is permanent. “The children did not therefore give free informed and legally meaningful consent to fast to death,” she said in her ruling.

The judge found the starvation deaths flowed from the unlawful acts and omissions of those enforcing the fasting regime. Religious practice had not produced them as an unintended consequence, she ruled. The defendants each took on a separate role, she added, yet all of their conduct belonged to a single criminal enterprise.

The court observed, before turning to the murder counts, that the evidence raised the question whether the conduct could bear the character of crimes against humanity.

Children First, Then a Dry Fast

Prosecutors said the fasting moved through the settlement in stages, children first, while guards controlled movement and stopped escapes. Parents were directed to withhold food from their children. A dry fast followed, and followers were barred from drinking water.

Survivors described an order that began with children, followed by unmarried women, then men, and last the church’s leaders. Mackenzie himself is not believed to have starved. The judge said his followers took him to be speaking for Jesus, and the burials inside the forest were called weddings, the dead celebrated as having wed Jesus.

What the Exhumations Pulled Up

Authorities began exhuming shallow graves in April 2023 and recovered 429 bodies. Many of the victims had starved. Other bodies carried signs consistent with asphyxia, neck compression, strangulation and blunt injuries, and investigators found some with their hands and legs bound. Hundreds of people tied to the cult remain declared missing.

Seventeen men hired from a nearby town carried out the digging, some paid just $8 a day.

Prosecutors called 121 witnesses, among them survivors, investigators, relatives and forensic experts. One of them, Enos Amanya Ngala, had served as Mackenzie’s head of security and was initially accused himself before he entered a plea deal and testified for the state.

An appeal is coming, said defense lawyer Lawrence Obonyo, whose client maintains he forced no one to fast. Separate cases on terrorism, radicalization and denying children an education still await Mackenzie and other cult leaders.

From a Nairobi Taxi to Times TV

Mackenzie drove a taxi in Nairobi before he turned to preaching. He and his wife founded Good News International Ministries in 2003 in the coastal town of Malindi. Branches of the church opened across Kenya and pulled in thousands of followers, some of whom sold property to donate. Times TV, a station the church ran itself, broadcast his sermons.

He called education evil and kept children out of school. He banned his followers from taking medication and told them to burn their birth certificates and digital IDs. His anti-Western preaching condemned the United States, the United Nations and the Catholic Church.

Authorities shut down the church and the television station in 2019. Mackenzie then moved to Shakahola forest, about 70 kilometers (about 43 miles) from Malindi, and some devotees followed him there and lived in mud houses. Survivors said they were ordered to starve until they met Jesus.

A man whose wife and daughter had relocated to the forest tipped off authorities in 2023, and the tip led police to mass graves and emaciated survivors. Prosecutors charged Mackenzie in January 2024 with 191 counts of murder, and the state proscribed his church as an organized criminal group.