Justice Diana Mochache while delivering judgment lasting eight hours said Mackenzie’s followers regarded him as a mouthpiece of Jesus and obeyed him without question.
According to the judge, it was discovered during the trial that the cult’s victims “were celebrated as having wedded with Jesus”.
Aside from Mackenzie, twenty- nine of his followers were also guilty of 191 counts of murder.
The victims 190 of them children, were allegedly forced to starve to death on their way to meeting Jesus for salvation.
Mackenzie’s doomsday cult had forbidden education to its members and dismissed modern medicine as evil.
Mackenzie and his alleged accomplices pleaded not guilty to the charges, maintaining throughout their trial that there was no forced starvation to death.
They had also denied charges of terrorism, radicalisation and denying education to the cult’s child members.
The self-styled preacher was arrested in April 2023 after the Kenyan police discovered a shallow mass grave containing over 400 bodies buried in a remote part of the Shakahola forest.
It was not far from where the cult had settled its followers who were drawn from across Kenya.
Most of the victims had their hands tied and wrapped in bedsheets.
Female members were banned from using make-up as they were told to shave the hairs off their heads. They appeared mostly bald.
The favourite preaching theme by Mackenzie who set up his Good News International Ministries in 2003 was about the ”End of Days”, conjuring up apocalyptic images about the afterlife and the faithful followers’ role in it.
His church would shut down in 2019 but he continued evangelising at the Shakahola forest.
WN/as/APA