NAIROBI, Kenya
A key suspect in Kenya’s Shakahola cult massacre pleaded guilty Friday to the murders of 191 followers, most of them children, in a dramatic turn in a case linked to more than 400 deaths caused by starvation and abuse.
Enos Amanya, also known as Hallelujah, admitted to the killings before the High Court in Mombasa, becoming the first of 29 defendants to confess in the case tied to self-styled preacher Paul Nthenge Mackenzie.
The plea was entered before Justice Diana Kavedza and followed nearly 22 months of denial since the trial began.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said the plea marked “a major breakthrough in the Shakahola massacre trial” after Amanya “confessed to participating in the deaths and burials of more than 191 victims, most of them children.”
The court heard that the murders were committed between January 2021 and September 2023 in the Shakahola area along the Kenyan coast, with prosecutors saying Amanya acted in concert with Mackenzie and other co-accused persons in a coordinated and deliberate scheme that led to mass deaths through starvation, abuse and coercion.
Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Jami Yamina told the court that Amanya served as a grave digger and a security enforcer for the sect, ensuring followers complied with Mackenzie’s teachings.
Prosecutors said the group used coded language to normalize death, referring to bodies as “fertilizer,” burials as “planting,” and dying as “taking a jet” to meet Jesus.
The court heard the names of 11 children who were murdered.
Other victims were identified by initials, gender and grave sites from which their bodies were exhumed.
Prosecutors said Amanya admitted that his own children were among the victims, and that he participated in their burial alongside his wife, Anne Anyoso Alukhwe, who is also charged in the case.
He told the court that one child, Izrael Veronica, survived after leaving Shakahola and rejecting the teachings.
After confirming the facts as true, Kavedza convicted Amanya on his own plea of guilty.
At the request of the DPP, the court ordered the Coast Regional Probation and Aftercare Service to prepare a comprehensive victim impact assessment report to guide sentencing and directed prison authorities to isolate the convict for his safety.
Pre-sentencing hearings for victims’ witnesses are scheduled Feb. 2 – Feb. 6.
Prosecutors closed the case following the plea, after calling 120 witnesses, producing more than 500 exhibits and conducting six months of hearings.
The Shakahola case emerged in early 2023 after authorities began exhuming bodies from mass graves in the Shakahola Forest in the coastal region, uncovering a starvation cult linked to Mackenzie’s Good News International Church.
Followers were instructed to fast to death in the belief it would hasten their journey to heaven, prompting a nationwide reckoning about religious extremism, child protection failures and gaps in oversight of fringe churches.
