Daily Times

Outside a morgue, Bethy Kahindi wailed for her missing sister, certain she was the victim of a Kenyan cult believed to have brainwashed dozens of followers into starving to death. The last time they spoke, nearly a year ago, Kahindi’s sister told her “she will meet Jesus, and that we will see each other in Heaven”.

“I have no hope of finding my sister and her six kids alive,” the 37-year-old told AFP, red-eyed and distraught as other families also waited anxiously for news of their loved ones in the town of Malindi on Kenya’s coast. Some 80 kilometres (50 miles) away, in a forest where the cult gathered, police dug beneath the red soil where dozens of bodies have already been exhumed in recent days, more than half of them children.

Seventeen more corpses were discovered in mass graves on Tuesday, bringing to 90 the tally of dead so far linked to the Good News International Church and its now-notorious pastor, Paul Mackenzie Nthenge. Dozens of devotees were also found alive but emaciated in Shakahola forest where Nthenge, a taxi driver turned radical preacher, is accused of encouraging his flock to find God through starvation.

Some of those rescued refused to eat, determined to fast until the end. But many remain missing and the Kenya Red Cross has been contacted by hundreds of families desperate for any news of loved ones who they say belonged to the cult.