by tyler | Jun 16, 2023 | africa, CNN
Cries pierced the air as a car full of women and children crossed into Chad from war-torn Sudan. A woman, in the late stages of pregnancy, lay in the backseat, lifeless and soaked in blood. Her children wailed at her feet.
“I sat next to her in the car,” said Butheina Nourin, describing her perilous escape from Sudan’s Darfur region alongside the dead woman. “Her name was Fatima. I don’t know her surname.”
Fighters from the powerful Sudanese paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and their armed allies manned checkpoints along their route, Nourin said, demanding money from every passenger in exchange for safe passage.
This brutal method of extortion has become widespread in Darfur, according to dozens of witnesses who recounted similar incidents to CNN.
The vast western region of Sudan is the site of what has been widely described as the 21st century’s first genocide, with largely Arab militias systematically killing non-Arab African groups who make up the majority of the local population.
A growing body of evidence, including first-hand accounts, expert testimony and verified social media video, suggests that the RSF has revived those tactics in Darfur, and exported them to other parts of Sudan as it fights a war with the country’s military.
Since mid-April, Sudan’s army chief Abdul Fattah al-Burhan has largely waged his offensive from the sky, aerially bombarding RSF positions in residential areas and inflicting a civilian death toll.
Meanwhile, RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) has strengthened his tactical military positions by driving civilians out of their properties and employing the well-worn playbook developed in Darfur: Kill, terrorize and expel.
Fatima’s story is just one example. Eyewitnesses recalled that, by the time the car carrying her arrived at the last of the RSF positions, she had run out of cash. Only a few kilometers separated her, her two children and her unborn child from the safety of Chad.
“She told the fighters she had spent all her money at other checkpoints,” eyewitness Nourin said. “They shot her immediately.
“The bullet went through one side of her head and exited the other. We all screamed.”
The interest, influence and material support of Russia’s notorious paramilitary group Wagner in the region is also exacerbating the violence, CNN has found.
According to intelligence officials, eyewitnesses at key transit points and CNN’s open-source analysis, Wagner has been arming the RSF using supply routes that run through the Darfur region.
“What is not in doubt is Wagner’s role in this, it has been supplying the RSF with arms and supplies through Darfur,” one Western intelligence official told CNN.
“It follows Wagner’s modus operandi. Create chaos and seize power,” another intelligence source active in the region added.
A months-long CNN investigation uncovered an increase in Wagner supplies to the RSF that began in the run-up to Sudan’s conflict. Armaments appear to have been shuttled into Sudan through key transit points: Russia’s air and naval base in the Syrian coastal region of Latakia, Wagner bases in Libya, and Bangui airport in the Central African Republic.
The weapons were also transported into Sudan through overland routes, extending a robust relationship that predated the war, where the country’s military leadership, headed by General Burhan, granted Moscow large concessions in the country’s gold mining industry in exchange for weapons and political backing.
That quid pro quo helped finance Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine while entrenching Sudan’s military junta, especially Hemedti, who had a meteoric rise to power from a leader of the RSF’s previous incarnation, the Janjaweed, which was accused of committing atrocities in Darfur in the early 2000s.
The Janjaweed – or “devils on horseback” – was later absorbed into Sudan’s security forces. Former dictator Omar al-Bashir gave Hemedti a nickname: Hemayti, “my protector.”
Before Sudan’s current war erupted in mid-April, Hemedti was the second most powerful person in government.
He allied with his now bitter enemy, Burhan, to stifle a democratic movement that helped overthrow dictator Bashir in 2019. The two generals then aligned to lead a coup against an internationally recognized transitional government in 2021, and crushed a pro-democracy protest movement. More than 100 protesters were killed in the 2021 anti-coup demonstrations.
Their rivalry flared into open warfare in mid-April, and CNN’s reporting has found that Wagner has dropped its wholesale support for the military junta in order to back one side in the conflict – the RSF.
The UN says at least 860 people have been killed since the start of the current conflict, with about 6,000 injured across the country as of June 3. Around half a million people have fled Sudan, with more than 1.4 million internally displaced.
A near shutdown in telecommunications in Darfur means that most of the information about the violence now playing out there has trickled out through newly arrived refugees.
Reports of atrocities committed by RSF fighters and their allied militias, clearly identified by their uniforms, are consistent across dozens of testimonies. They include arbitrary killings, the wholesale destruction of vital civilian infrastructure, the looting of homes and hospitals, and even mass rapes.
“I saw the aftermath of torched internally displaced people (IDP) centers and witnessed the RSF raiding residences,” said Hussein Haran, a human rights activist who was in the Darfur city of el-Fasher when the fighting broke out before fleeing to Geneina, another city in the region, and then to Chad.
“Even the hospitals were looted. At Geneina’s research hospital, they stole the blood bank, and they spilled the blood all over the street,” Haran, who works at the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA), told CNN.
“The only way I can explain this is that they didn’t want to leave a drop of blood for the ethnic Africans [who claim no Arab ancestry] being treated at the hospital. This is an ethnic cleansing project,” he added.
On Wednesday, the RSF abducted and executed West Darfur Governor Khamis Abbakar, according to the Sudanese military. The RSF denied responsibility for the killing, blaming “outlaws” without providing further detail.
Some claims are nearly impossible to verify during active fighting, but satellite imagery from the area paints a clear picture. At least three cities and 10 towns and villages in Darfur have been partially burned to the ground in the past month alone.
At least one food market in Geneina, which hosts more than 100,000 people internally displaced by violence over the last two decades, has been torched. A school-turned-IDP center was also set alight in the city, according to satellite photographs.
Many of the interviewees depict an emboldened RSF that is better armed than its previous incarnation two decades ago.
“The scale of the fighting in Darfur today eclipses that of the early 2000s,” said Kholood Khair, founder of the Confluence Advisory, a Khartoum-based think tank. “The Janjaweed of 2003 definitely couldn’t have done what the RSF of 2023 has done.”
Khair added: “But having enriched himself and positioned himself so well, despite the tumult of the past four years, Hemedti is in a position where he’s able to do exactly that.”
More than 300,000 people were killed in the ethnic cleansing campaign by the Janjaweed and its Arab militia allies in the early 2000s. A precise death toll is almost impossible to tally, as many of those killed were dumped into mass graves. Then-President Bashir was charged by the International Criminal Court in 2010 with crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in relation to the Darfur conflict. He still has not been handed over by Sudanese authorities to the ICC to stand trial.
Since then, the RSF has extended its reach beyond Sudan’s borders into Libya, and, crucially for Hemedti’s international clout, into Yemen, where the group aided a devastating Saudi and Emirati military effort to crush Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Hemedti’s power reached new heights after he helped overthrow Bashir in 2019 and went on to become the military junta’s deputy leader. His ties to the United Arab Emirates and Russia appeared to have consolidated his political power and helped turn him into one of Sudan’s wealthiest men.
Another characteristic of the ethnic cleansing in Darfur of the early 2000s was mass rapes, extensively documented by experts and rights groups. According to witness testimony, that brutal tactic is back in full force.
“The strategy of raping women has been used extensively by the RSF,” said Hala al-Karib, regional director of women’s rights group SIHA. “The RSF have used it in Darfur to humiliate the indigenous Darfuri population for 20 years.
“The sad part is that they became very comfortable with it because they were never held accountable for it.”
Dozens of incidents of sexual assault, including gang rapes and the assault of female minors, have been confirmed by non-profit groups and experts since the start of the latest conflict. Most of these occurred in Darfur. The United Nations says it has received reports of sexual assault on humanitarian workers in the region.
In late May, the Sudanese government’s Combating Violence Against Women Unit recorded at least 36 cases of sexual assault in the Sudanese capital and 25 cases in Darfur, with 18 perpetrated by men in RSF uniforms.
But Sudanese activists claim that the assaults are much more widespread. In one case described by SIHA, 24 women and girls were abducted at the Daman hotel in south Darfur and repeatedly raped for three days. The oldest woman was 56 years old and the youngest was 14, according to SIHA.
Rapes are also being reported in the capital, where the RSF has repeatedly commandeered people’s homes, expelling the residents and looting their belongings, while combating air attacks by the Sudanese military.
In a video obtained and verified by CNN, one fighter is seen raping a woman in the front yard of a Khartoum home while another, wearing RSF uniform, stands outside keeping watch.
“For the people that say there is no rape, this is rape,” says the person surreptitiously recording the video from across the street.
“And this guy stands there to make sure (the perpetrator) is protected,” the person says, panning to the man wearing RSF uniform and acting as a lookout. “This is happening in public, on a main street and with total audacity and insolence.”
In a voice recording obtained through SIHA by CNN regarding another incident, a woman in the capital said she was forced to watch as her two young daughters were raped by RSF fighters. “They beat us with weapons,” she said, describing the raid on her home. “We told them we had no money and no gold.”
“They raped my two daughters and they were screaming at the top of their lungs. We were screaming as well,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.
“I had to hold my son back from going to his sisters. I said if you go to them, they will riddle you with bullets.”
The atrocities have only intensified and proliferated over the course of the war, say activists and experts who argue that impunity has propelled Hemedti’s rise to power since his time as a leader in the Janjaweed in the early 2000s.
“Nobody in Sudan has more blood on their hands than Hemedti,” said Sudan analyst Eric Reeves.
In a statement to CNN, the RSF vehemently denied the allegations of rape, arbitrary killings and targeting of civilian infrastructure. It accused the Sudanese army of “indiscriminately bombing” civilians and claimed that RSF uniforms worn by the perpetrators in witness testimony were “counterfeit.”
“The RSF upholds international law and is dedicated to safeguarding Sudan,” the statement said. “Any actions inconsistent with this principle do not reflect our values, and we are committed to ensuring that those who violate the law are held accountable.”
The group also denied links to Wagner.
In recent years, Hemedti has been invited to capitals around the world, including Moscow, Cairo and Abu Dhabi.
He and his forces were further elevated after he cracked down on people-smuggling routes operating from Sudan to Libya, as part of an onward journey to Europe. The European Union has sent at least $200 million to Sudan’s government over the past decade to stem migration.
Hemedti would go on to boast about this in interviews with international media. “[The EU] lose[s] millions in fighting migration, that’s why [it has] to support us,” he told Al Jazeera in 2017.
“The international community created this monster. They are raping women because they can,” women’s rights activist Karib said of the RSF. “They know the ramifications. They know the impact. They know how terrorizing it is. People run away.
“It’s a tried and tested method from Darfur that’s now being used across Sudan.”
In a statement to CNN, the US State Department said it had “received deeply disturbing reports about an increased number of attacks, gender-based violence, including sexual violence … The majority of such acts are reportedly attributable to the RSF.”
The State Department released a strongly worded statement Thursday night condemning atrocities in Darfur.
“Rape, murder, targeted ethnic-based killings, the destruction of whole villages – these are the horrors that the war in Sudan has brought back to Darfur,” a tweet from the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs said Friday. “Credible sources place blame at the feet of RSF and allied militias. Attacks on civilians in Sudan by any party must end.”
Prior to the publication of its report, CNN shared with the State Department its findings on the extent of the ethnically motivated rapes and atrocities being committed by fighters from the RSF and their armed allies.
The fear now among the Sudanese and some in the international community is that Wagner’s involvement in the war has helped make Hemedti “bigger” and “badder.”
“The reality is that Hemedti is incredibly useful to Wagner,” the Western intelligence official told CNN. “He has tribal and kinship links across Africa and there is incredible concern about the damage that a bigger, badder RSF – emboldened and supported by Wagner – could wreak not just in Sudan but in the entire region.”
Wagner’s presence in and financial interests in Africa are well documented, but the violence in Sudan appears to have given the group a fresh opportunity.
Wagner chief Yeveny Prigozhin did not directly address CNN’s request for comment on Wagner’s support for the RSF and its role in fueling the current atrocities.
In a sarcastically worded statement, he said Wagner had trained all the military bodies in Sudan, including the RSF, and blamed American interference for the country’s current turmoil. He claimed there had been “no sexual crimes in Sudan” while Bashir was in power.
The State Department also acknowledged Wagner’s involvement in Sudan. “Engagement with the Wagner group simply brings more death, destruction and instability,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, the violence continues to intensify with no sign yet that the diplomatic process between the rival factions will bring a permanent end to the conflict. The Sudanese must fend for themselves, while they face what they describe as the hallmarks of genocide.
“The situation right now is much worse than it was in 2003. The Janjaweed militia was not as powerful as it is now,” said SIHA’s Darfur-based Hussein Haran.
“The RSF is as powerful as the state. They have much more power now and more capabilities… and they are committing genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
This story has been updated to include comment from the US State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs on the violence against civilians in Darfur.
by tyler | Jun 13, 2023 | africa, CNN
Nigerian chef Hilda Effiong Bassey, known on social media as Hilda Baci, has been confirmed as the new world record holder for the longest cooking marathon, the Guinness World Record (GWR) committee said Tuesday.
The record was confirmed nearly a month after the GWR reviewed footage from the cookathon, which lasted four days.
“I can now announce that with a time of 93 hours and 11 minutes, Hilda Baci is the new holder for the Guiness world Records title of the longest cooking marathon,” an adjudicator simply identified as Mark, said in a video posted on the official Twitter handle of the Guiness World Records Tuesday.
The 26-year-old cooked in a makeshift kitchen for four days, starting on Thursday, May 11, and finishing on Monday, May 15, producing almost 100 pots of food, GWR said on its website.
“When I found out, I cried, prayed and screamed,” Bassey told CNN after learning of her record-breaking feat.
“Then I called my mum and we cried some more. I am so happy. Everything and all the hard work was worth it. I said I wanted to be a record holder and now I am. This is for all my team members and for all the hard work,” Bassey added.
Although Bassey cooked for 100 hours, she was penalized for an error in her scheduled rest breaks, according to the world record committee.
“There was a miscalculation when it came to Hilda’s rest breaks, meaning we are unable to award the 100 hours claimed,” the adjudicator said.
The longest cookathon title was previously held by Indian chef Lata Tondon, who cooked for 87 hours and 45 minutes in 2019.
Bassey’s record attempt made her a star and was so popular that it crashed the GWR site for two days, “due to the immense volume of traffic we received from her legion of loyal fans,” the organization said.
“I also want to thank Nigerians. They are so awesome. The support was so great. We really did something amazing,” Bassey said.
by tyler | Jun 8, 2023 | africa, CNN
Two hundred and eighty children between the ages of one month and 15 years were evacuated from a Khartoum orphanage that was affected by the heavy combat in Sudan’s capital, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
The children from the Mygoma Orphanage in Khartoum have had no access to proper healthcare since fighting broke out on April 15 in Sudan.
They were evacuated to the south of Khartoum in an operation facilitated by the ICRC on Wednesday.
Reuters previously reported that dozens of babies had died there since the war began due to dehydration and malnutrition, and that the orphanage had housed about 400 children before the conflict started.
Some of the children suffer from mental health conditions that could be “exacerbated by the stressful conflict environment they were living in,” the ICRC said.
“They spent incredibly difficult moments in an area where the conflict has been raging for the past 6 weeks without access to proper healthcare, an especially hard situation for children with special needs,” the head of the ICRC delegation in Sudan Jean-Christophe Sandoz said.
The ICRC said it obtained security guarantees from warring parties to ensure the safe passage for the children and the orphanage staff.
The children have been transferred to the custody of the Sudanese ministry of social development.
Almost 14 million children are in urgent need of lifesaving humanitarian support in Sudan, the highest number ever recorded in the country, UNICEF said.
UNICEF is calling for US$838 million to address the crisis, an increase of US$253 million since the current conflict began in April 2023.
About 1.2 million people (242,666 families) have been displaced internally by the conflict as of 29 May, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
“Many of them, including children, women, elderly, and others with specific needs, are sheltering in public buildings, or forced to sleep outdoors where they are exposed to severe weather and health threats,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said.
by tyler | Jun 7, 2023 | africa, CNN
Senegal’s foreign ministry announced Tuesday it was temporarily closing its overseas consulates amid raging political tensions that have fueled attacks on its diplomatic missions in Paris, Bordeaux, Milan and New York.
Deadly protests broke out last week in the Senegalese capital Dakar and other cities, following the sentencing of popular opposition leader Ousmane Sonko.
Several days of rioting left at least 16 people dead and hundreds injured as Sonko’s supporters clashed with security forces.
The fallout from crisis has reverberated abroad with the Senegalese diaspora leading demonstrations at the country’s consulates overseas.
Its foreign ministry says it is taking a “precautionary measure” to shut its diplomatic missions in France, Italy and the United States for the time being, following a “series of attacks.”
The Senegalese consulate in Milan was the worst hit, the ministry said, noting that “machines used to produce passports and national identity cards were destroyed.”
It added that services will resume at the consulates “as soon as the material and security conditions allow it.”
More than 40 protesters believed to be Sonko’s supporters converged on the Senegalese consulate in Milan on Monday, Italian public broadcaster RAI reported, adding that the consulate building was looted and the Consul General Mamadou Lamine Diouf was attacked.
Calm has slowly returned to the Senegalese capital after the deadly clashes, the country’s Red Cross told CNN.
“Only one case of demonstration was noted yesterday (Monday) in Malika in the Dakar suburbs,” said Nfaly Sadio of the Senegalese Red Cross.
“For the total number of wounded rescued by the Red Cross, it was 357,” he told CNN Tuesday.
Tensions, however, remain high and there are fears the protests could flare up again as uncertainty swirls around Sonko’s sentencing which could jeopardize his chances of running in next year’s presidential race.
Sonko has yet to be arrested after being convicted last week of “corrupting youth” which according to the country’s penal code is “immoral behavior” towards a person younger than 21. He was absent from court as the sentence was handed down Thursday.
He was cleared of a rape charge and death threats against an employee of a massage parlor.
Justice Minister Ismaila Madior Fall told Senegalese media that the state is prepared to arrest the opposition leader once it gets the nod from the country’s prosecution office. The arrest could happen at any time, he added.
Businesses were gradually re-opening in the capital city Dakar where public and private buildings were destroyed as demonstrators clashed with riot police.
Other troubled cities hit by the deadly clashes are also returning to normalcy, local media reported.
Sonko leads the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF) and enjoys widespread support among young people in the country.
When he was first held on the rape charge in 2021, angry youth clashed with police leaving at least eight people dead, Amnesty International reported at the time.
Senegal is considered one of West Africa’s most stable democracies but has in recent years been rocked with deadly protests, mainly from young people who are frustrated about unemployment, inequality and corruption.
In the aftermath of the 2021 protests, President Macky Sall said he understood their anger and pledged to provide extra funding and more opportunities for employment.
However, he has not commented publicly during the latest demonstrations and some Senegalese have called him out.
“Senegal experienced a tragedy that moved the whole world. Unarmed demonstrators, or at most equipped with harmless stones against armored vehicles and shields, the blind repression launched against these citizens produced 16 deaths in 2 days. Not even Macky’s tweet. Contempt,” tweeted journalist Pape Alé Niang.
Sall has been most recently engaged in peace negotiations with the African Union on the Russia-Ukraine war, according to his office.
by tyler | Jun 7, 2023 | africa, CNN
A UN war crimes court has ruled that 88-year-old Rwandan genocide suspect Félicien Kabuga is no longer capable of “meaningful participation” in his trial.
The court said their conclusion was based on information obtained from medical records and staff who care for him which suggest “a significant decline in Kabuga’s ability to care for himself.”
“The trial chamber finds Mr Kabuga is no longer capable of meaningful participation in his trial,” the Hague-based International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) said in an order published on Tuesday.
The court suggested that because Kabuga is unlikely to regain fitness, the judges should adopt an “alternative procedure that resembles a trial as closely as possible, but without the possibility of a conviction.”
Kabuga is one of the last fugitives accused of broadcasting hateful propaganda and arming militias in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
He was arrested in May 2020 at a modest apartment in Paris where he was living under a pseudonym after 26 years on the run.
He pleaded not guilty at his first tribunal appearance in November 2020.
As president of Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), he had been one of Rwanda’s wealthiest and most influential men among the Hutu elite.
Kabuga’s trial began last September before the IRMCT for what prosecutors say was his “substantial” contributions to the genocide against the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda.
Prosecutors say Kabuga’s radio station RTLM broadcast genocidal propaganda and accuse him of arming the ‘Interahamwe’ militia, widely considered to be the main culprits behind the killings.
IRMCT prosecutors say he did not wield a machete or pick up a microphone to broadcast hate but his conduct since 1992 pointed to a consistent anti-Tutsi agenda.
They told judges that an estimated 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days.
“The charges against Kabuga reflect his status as a wealthy and well-connected insider,” prosecutor Rashid S. Rashid said in his opening statement last September.
He said the case reflects Kabuga’s “individual responsibility for serious crimes committed during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.”
by tyler | Jun 5, 2023 | africa, CNN
At their modest home in Kenya’s western Bungoma County, Rodgers Shibutse noticed that his mother Pamela had become captivated by a popular but controversial televangelist known as Paul Mackenzie.
Pamela Mukalasinga, 54, a small-scale trader and mother of five, would tune in religiously to Mackenzie’s Times TV channel. She became determined to meet him, Shibutse recalls.
She was depressed because her eldest daughter suffered from an illness, her son told CNN. He says she was lured to Mackenzie’s teachings by the promise of a miracle.
In June last year, four years after she first encountered Mackenzie’s teachings, Shibutse says his mother sold all her family’s belongings, including her son’s, and traveled nearly 1000km to join Mackenzie, in the coastal town of Malindi, eastern Kenya.
Shibutse did not hear from her until three months later, he said.
“After three months, my mum called to tell me she was at Malindi in Mackenzie’s land and that he had given her a piece of land and she was okay. I tried to convince her to tell me where the place was, but she hung up the phone and the line couldn’t be reached anymore.”
At around the same time, local media reports surfaced that Mackenzie had closed his Good News International Church (GNI) and relocated deeper into Malindi with his followers after acquiring a vast land at the Shakahola forest.
Now, Pamela Mukalasinga is believed to be among 614 people who the Kenyan Red Cross told CNN have gone missing, and her family fears she may be one of more than 200 bodies recovered from shallow graves in the 800-acre Shakahola forest.
Police are calling the events at the church “disturbing and inhumane.” They say Mackenzie, 50, is a cult leader who allegedly brainwashed hundreds of his followers into starving themselves to death. Police say the case began with the deaths of two children.
He was arrested In March, suspected of giving instructions to the two children “to observe fasting till death in order to meet their maker,” said the police.
Kenyan prosecutors said at the time that the two children were “believed to have been starved and later suffocated to death by their mother with the intention of starving the minors in order for them to die and become heroes before God after death.”
The youngsters were allegedly buried in shallow graves at Shakahola on March 16 and 17, according to the prosecution, by Mackenzie and their parents. A court in Malindi ordered their exhumation.
A third child said to be their sibling, was rescued.
“The rescued child narrated the sufferings his two siblings underwent after being starved for some time before their mother suffocated them to death,” prosecutors said.
Mackenzie was granted bail during a court appearance on March 17 but was rearrested on April 14 following a discovery that more people had been buried at the Shakahola site where the two children were earlier exhumed.
Earlier this month, a Kenyan court granted a request by prosecutors to detain Mackenzie, his wife and 16 followers for 30 days until investigations are concluded, the country’s prosecution authority said.
Mackenzie appeared in court again on Friday, this time before magistrates in Mombasa and told CNN that the hearing is a “matter of intimidation” and “timewasting for nothing.” When asked about the accusations that followers of his group had starved their children following his instructions, Mackenzie said he had “never seen anybody starving.”
Mackenzie has yet to be officially charged, his lawyer George Kariuki told CNN. “No charges have been raised against Pastor Mackenzie,” Kariuki said. “The state asked for time to investigate … In that case, he has nothing to respond to until the investigations are complete.”
“We have not been presented with any charge sheet to enable us to take any further instructions from Mr. Mackenzie and those who are detained with him,” the lawyer added.
Kariuki said the prosecution has made several applications to detain his client to conduct further investigations. “They have been making the same applications,” he said.
The inquiry was launched after police received a tip-off that an area of land Mackenzie occupied in the Shakahola forest contained mass graves.
A grim tale of horror unfolded as they began exhuming bodies. Many of those found in the forest are believed to be followers of Mackenzie. Some of the group who were rescued told police they had been told to starve themselves to death.
Titus Katana, a former member of GNI, told local media that Mackenzie had a roster that determined who was to starve to death first. According to Katana, children and single people were the first to fast, before women and men followed. “Mackenzie and his family would go last,” he told the Kenyan newspaper, Nation.
Police clad in overalls have been scouring the site since April and have found an increasing number of bodies day by day.
Shibutse traveled to the forest near Malindi in search of his mother and said he saw bodies coming out of the shallow graves.
“I’ve seen many exhumed bodies. I was imagining if my mum was in this condition. I’m traumatized because I’m asking myself many questions: ‘Is my mum dead or not?’ If she’s dead, ‘does she look the way the other bodies are looking?’ Some ladies I saw being rescued alive from the bush looked very weak, you can even count their ribs,” he recalled.
“I saw a lot of things. People were there dying, some who had died were not even buried. I saw the decayed body of a man with no private part,” he said.
Some of Mackenzie’s followers were found alive but weakened, emaciated, and traumatized, according to rescue teams who said some resisted help.
“There was a lady who was found, she was very weak but resisted opening her mouth to get even a sip of water. This is extremism and brainwashing of the highest order,” Walid Sketty of Kenya-based human rights group Haki Africa, which has been involved in rescue operations at Shakahola, told CNN.
Government chief pathologist Johansen Oduor told reporters at the start of the autopsy process weeks ago that some of the 249 bodies so far recovered “had features of starvation.” Oduor told reporters that 36 autopsies were done, out of which 14 were found to have starved to death.
Ten of them were of them were children, Oduor said. He added that one of the people rescued alive “in a very bad state,” at the forest later died at the hospital and was severely dehydrated. He was also suffering from tuberculosis, the autopsy showed.
The cause of death could not be recorded for some of the recovered bodies due to their decomposed state. One of the bodies had a head injury and others had signs of blunt trauma and strangulation, he added.
As the police continue to unearth more bodies, questions are being asked as to how Mackenzie went from working as a taxi driver to an influential and controversial televangelist, whose radical teachings were not unknown to authorities.
Shibutse recalls that his mother started to observe some of Mackenzie’s doctrines denouncing healthcare and modern education for children.
“She tried to convince one of my sisters not to send her children to school. Whenever my mum took ill, she refused to go to the hospital except when I forced her to. She always said we were not supposed to go to the hospital but should instead pray,” Shibutse said.
Before she joined the cult, Pamela also shut down her maize trading business and tried to convince him to quit his job as a hair stylist, he said. “She tried to convince me to leave my job as a beautician and join her to go to Mackenzie’s church because the work I’m doing, making hair and nails, isn’t godly,” he told CNN.
Mackenzie has been on the radar of Kenyan police for several years. In 2017, prosecutors say Mackenzie was charged with radicalization, and promoting extreme beliefs, but a court acquitted him.
He pleaded guilty, along with two teachers, to charges of offering education in an unregistered institution.
Mackenzie was also accused of depriving his three children, then aged 4, 5 and 13 years of formal education which is compulsory for children in Kenya, according to his case file made public by the Kenyan judiciary. He was fined 20,000 Kenyan shillings ($147), the country’s prosecution office said.
“If anyone feels offended about my summons and teachings in accordance to the scripture, let them go to court and produce evidence,” he said during a church service, reports Citizen Digital. “I am not afraid to serve my god.”
Despite his brushes with the law and extreme views, Mackenzie continued to broadcast on his Times TV channel and preached often fiery sermons every Sunday at his GNI church in Malindi. In one of them, he urged his followers to “end their ignorance” and “stop eating bread and run to Jesus.”
“You are told that when the doctors come here, make sure your children are vaccinated. You priest, do you know what vaccination is? And do you know what the government is? Do you know what its source is? How long will you live with this ignorance? If you don’t stop eating bread and run to Jesus, do you think your ignorance will end?”
Mackenzie spent most of his early years in the streets of Malindi, where he worked as a cab driver, his brother Robert said in an interview with Kenyan media.
In 2003, he founded his church, after being dismissed from previous churches due to undisclosed disagreements, according to the interview with his brother.
Mackenzie’s GNI soon gained notoriety due to his controversial teachings, centered around the apocalyptic ‘end times’ and on the biblical book of Revelations.
For example, the GNI, in a 2014 post on its website, implied that a digital identity card introduced by the Kenyan government for its citizens was the “666 mark of the beast.
Some members of his church allegedly destroyed their school certificates, sold off all their valuables and donated the proceeds to him, relatives told local media.
Mackenzie’s case has sent shockwaves through Kenya and raised questions as to how he acquired a large expanse of land where mass burials were conducted unnoticed.
Sketty of Haki Africa, a human rights organization, who raised the alarm about mass graves after being contacted by concerned relatives in March, told CNN: “We expect that this area should have local chiefs. How come someone has been burying bodies without our government authorities knowing?”
Governor Gideon Mung’aro of the Kilifi region where Shakahola forest is located said Mackenzie wasn’t the legal owner of the land, he told Citizen Digital. He added that the mass graves would have been noticed much earlier if they were in occupied areas.
Kenya is a deeply religious country and has had problems in the past with cults, which led to attempts to set new regulations for churches. “Churches are somewhat untouchable in Kenya,” analyst and political writer Moses Odhiambo told CNN.
“Politicians and the powers-that-be fear crossing their paths on the grounds they can sway their followers to act in a particular way politically,” he added.
“The government has nothing to hide and will ensure justice for the victims of this tragedy,” Kenyan Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said while promising tighter regulations for religious organizations.
As part of the crackdown by the authorities, another prominent televangelist, Ezekiel Ombok Odero, of the New Life Prayer Church in Kilifi County has also been arrested and faces charges “related to mass killing of his followers.”
The New Life Prayer Church sits on a 65-acre plot and has a guest house that accommodates members who “sleep in the church,” the preacher said in a December 2022 interview with Nation.
“The said church has been shut down,” Kindiki said, adding that “over 100 people who were holed up at the premises (of the church) have been evacuated and will be required to record statements.”
Odero’s lawyer Jared Magolo told CNN that the allegations were untrue. “There are allegations that people who go to his (Odero’s) church for prayers when they are sick … and some succumb, they die, they are buried secretly. Of course, it is not true,” he said.
Prosecutors told the court there was “evidence that people died within the precincts of the New Life Centre Church,” adding that there was also proof of a “commercial transaction” between Odero and Mackenzie.
“It’s just a commercial transaction,” said Magolo. “When Mackenzie wanted to sell his TV station, Pastor Odero bought it. He hasn’t fully paid for the station, so I’m sure they must have been talking,” he told CNN.
Mackenzie’s lawyer told CNN when asked about the business deal that his client had “not discussed with me any such information. The prosecution is yet to avail any supporting evidence to their remarks,” Kariuki said. Odero was released on bail earlier this month.
Kenya’s Communications Authority announced last month it was suspending the broadcast of two TV stations linked to Odero and Mackenzie for airing “inappropriate content on exorcism” among other offenses.
The spotlight on Kenya’s megachurches and their flamboyant preachers could not have come at a better time, says analyst Odhiambo, who believes it is time for tighter regulations.
“It is precedent setting. It is a case that may define whether to go for state regulation or self-regulation in protecting Kenyans from manipulative radical preachers.”
More than a month from the grim discoveries at Shakahola, Shibutse is facing the reality that he may never see his mother again: “It’s now more than one month and the chances of getting my mum alive are very low,” he said.
