Kenya: Doomsday cult leader found guilty of illegal filming

Paul Mackenzie, the Kenyan preacher at the heart of a doomsday cult that resulted in the deaths of over 400 people, was found guilty, but not of their murders.

The senior resident magistrate in the town of Malindi, Olga Onalo, instead found Mackenzie guilty of operating a TV studio and distributing films without a licence from the Kenya Film Classification Board.

Following the discovery of hundreds of bodies in mass graves in a forested area across his 800-acre property in the coastal county of Kilifi, the preacher was arrested in April and has been in police custody for more than six months.

According to the prosecution, Mackenzie gave his followers orders to starve to death so they could see Jesus.

Despite being arraigned in court several times since his arrest, he has not been formally charged with the deaths.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions tweeted on Friday that Mackenzie is the “prime suspect.”

And on Friday he was acquitted of additional charges of influencing children to not attend school and using radical preaching to incite Christians against Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims.

On December 1st, he will be sentenced for the offenses pertaining to the movie, and he may spend up to five years behind bars.

Prosecutors requested on Thursday that Mackenzie be detained for an additional six months while police finished their investigations, which included looking for the remaining scores of missing persons.

There have been increasing demands for Kenyan government regulation of churches since his arrest.