Beatrice Elachi, MP for Dagoretti North, believes that family members of controversial pastor Paul Mackenzie, as well as his church supervisors, should be apprehended.
The controversial cleric who leads the Good News International church is being investigated after authorities discovered a slew of his followers’ bodies buried in Kilifi’s Shakahola Forest.
Subsequent investigations revealed that Pastor Mackenzie allegedly instructed members to starve themselves in order to “meet Jesus.”
According to MP Elachi, Mackenzie’s closest aides encouraged him to commit his criminal acts and should be held accountable as well.
She claimed that the supervisors were tasked with ensuring that the alleged cult’s followers would keep the fast.
“They should be jailed, him and the wife so that they learn a good lesson. You are part of the participation of ensuring they are fasting they have to, and even the supervisors, all of them must be in,” she said speaking on Citizen TV’s Daybreak show on Tuesday.
The legislator also claimed that the victims were easily persuaded to follow pastor Mackenzie’s doctrine because they came from impoverished backgrounds and were “desperate.”
“We cannot take advantage of poverty to finish our people. You know it is poverty that drives anyone to do anything to survive. But then this one who decides that everyone should fast and him he’s not fasting must be charged, this one deserves death,” Elachi said.
She advocated for stricter rules governing the registration of religious societies in Kenya, noting that most religious leaders end up exploiting the faithful for personal gain.
“We cannot use the Bible to also now find people going into things where they are brainwashed until you cannot understand,” she said.
“I would plead with the church and religious leaders it is time to regulate because people have started to take advantage of not just poverty but also people’s challenges.”
So far, police say they have arrested fourteen members of the cult, two of whom are Mackenzie’s brother and his wife, according to a victim who says she saw them on television after they were captured.
As of Monday morning, detectives had yet to dig up more than 50 graves with a total of 58 bodies exhumed.
Japhet Koome, the Inspector-General of Police, told reporters in the afternoon that 29 people had been rescued alive.
Mackenzie was charged last month after two kids died of starvation while in their parents’ care and he is in custody.
