Kenya cult toll climbs to 98 as families await news of missing

  • last year

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Transcript
00:00 Stretching over 800 acres, the entire Shaka Hola forest has become a crime scene.
00:06 On the ground, detectives and rescuers worked relentlessly to exhume mass graves
00:11 as the body count kept piling up.
00:14 Flying in from Nairobi, Kenya's interior minister vowed to bring those responsible to justice.
00:19 The government of Kenya will do whatever it takes to make sure that we convict Mr. Mackenzie
00:27 and all those who helped him perpetrate his heinous crimes.
00:34 Police began combing the area last week after receiving a tip-off over missing persons,
00:39 but few were prepared for the horror they would unearth.
00:42 Dozens of mass graves filled with corpses, all members of the Good News International
00:47 Church, whose leader Paul Mackenzie Ntenge encouraged his followers to starve to death
00:52 in order to meet Jesus.
00:57 They came and took my sister, they also took her children.
01:02 We went to find her and got her back home, but she escaped and went back there.
01:06 We wonder what kind of power they used.
01:12 Locals say the cult, which was operating in the depths of the Shaka Hola forests, even
01:17 had its own militia to prevent foreigners from intruding.
01:20 "They had two groups inside their church.
01:24 One was like security, the other was people who were indoctrinated.
01:27 We weren't allowed to go in there.
01:29 There were people with machetes.
01:32 It was like their army."
01:36 Paul Mackenzie Ntenge was arrested twice in the past six years over radicalization charges,
01:42 raising questions over how the cult leader, who surrendered to police during the raid,
01:47 was able to operate undetected.

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