Kenyan doomsday cult leader charged with murder of 191 children

Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie and 29 associates were charged on Tuesday with the murder of 191 children whose bodies were found among more than double that number buried in a forest.

The defendants all denied the charges brought before a court in the coastal town of Malindi. One suspect was found mentally unfit to stand trial.

Prosecutors say Mackenzie ordered his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so that they could go to heaven before the world ended, in one of the world’s worst cult-related disasters in recent history.

The followers of his Good News International Church lived in several secluded settlements in an 800-acre area within the Shakahola forest. More than 400 bodies were eventually exhumed.