Nairobi - A Kenyan court on Tuesday gave authorities 14 days to prosecute a suspected cult leader, or face having to release him after he was detained over the deaths of hundreds of his followers.

Paul Nthenge Mackenzie has seen his nine-month detention extended on several occasions already as an investigation continues into what happened in Shakahola forest near the Indian Ocean coast, where piles of human remains were discovered last April.

The former taxi driver, detained on 14 April, is accused of inciting hundreds of his evangelical Good News International Church followers to starve themselves to death in order “to meet Jesus”, according to a Senate report.

Mackenzie and his co-accused are believed to have prevented his followers from breaking a fast, or trying to escape from the forest.

The apparent massacre has met with incomprehension in Kenya, a majority Christian country with around 4,000 officially-registered “churches”, according to government data.

But the country of 53 million has struggled to regulate unscrupulous churches and cults which engage in criminality.

“This is the longest pre-charge detention in the history of the country” since the constitution was redrafted in 2010, said judge Yusuf Abdallah Shikanda.

He said a prosecution would have to follow, or else Mackenzie and 29 co-accused could be released in two weeks’ time.

Prosecutors had in September called for 180 days more to hold Mackenzie from that point, but Shikanda noted that 117 days since elapsed.

“In my view, that is sufficient time within which the pending investigations ought to have been completed,” he said.

In May, prosecutors had indicated they would bring a case for “terrorism” against Mackenzie, who was detained the day after the first bodies were discovered in the forest. To date, 429 bodies have been located.

Autopsies have revealed the majority of the victims died of hunger, but others, including children, appear to have been strangled, beaten or suffocated.

A Senate commission of inquiry reported in October that the self-proclaimed pastor had faced charges back in 2017 for his extreme preaching, but “the criminal justice system failed to deter the heinous activities of Paul Mackenzie in Shakahola”.

Mackenzie was acquitted on charges of radicalisation in 2017 for illegally providing school teaching -- he rejected the formal educational system that he claimed was not in line with the Bible.

In 2019, he was also accused of links to the death of two children believed to have been starved, suffocated and then buried in a shallow grave in Shakahola forest. 

He was released on bail pending trial. -AFP