Kenyan authorities begin autopsies of ‘starvation cult’ deaths

Forensic experts in Kenya have commenced autopsies of more than a hundred corpses found in mass graves from the Shakahola starvation cult.

On Monday, Kithure Kindiki, the country’s interior minister said the process would roughly take a week.

Investigators said they had completed 10 autopsies, comprising nine children aged between 18 months and 10 years, and one female adult, from the 101 bodies discovered last month in shallow graves.

Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, founder of the Good News International Church, incited his followers to starve themselves so they could meet God.

“Generally, most of them had features of starvation. We saw features of people who had not eaten. There was no food in the stomach,” Johansen Oduor, chief government pathologist, said.

Two showed signs of asphyxiation, he added.

Eight cult members who were found emaciated in the forest died later. So far, 44 people have been rescued while the death toll stands at 109. 

Oduor said the government was collecting DNA samples from people who had reported missing relatives and that the matching process would take at least a month to complete.

Earlier, Ezekiel Odero, head of the New Life Prayer Centre and Church, was arrested on Thursday and charged to court bordering on crimes of murder, aiding suicide, abduction, radicalisation, crimes against humanity, child cruelty, fraud and money laundering.

Prosecutors say he and Nthenge have a relationship and that some people who were missing from his church were found in the mass graves linked to Nthenge.

They are both expected to appear in court on Tuesday.