MOMBASA: A Kenyan court on Wednesday extended by 30 days the detention of cult leader Paul Mackenzie, who authorities accuse of ordering followers to starve their children and themselves to death.
The death toll has climbed to 133, and hundreds of people are still reported missing. Authorities continue to search for human remains in shallow graves scattered throughout a forest where Mackenzie’s followers were living.
Mackenzie, leader of the Good News International Church, has not yet been required to enter a plea after handing himself into police last month. A lawyer representing Mackenzie, George Kariuki, has said the self-styled pastor is cooperating with investigators.
Magistrate Yusuf Shikanda said at a hearing in the port city of Mombasa that Mackenzie and 17 other people detained in connection with the mass deaths would not be granted bail because of concerns that their release would jeopardize investigations.
“Being aware of the respondents’ right to be presumed innocent until the contrary is proved, I find that there is reasonable suspicion that the respondents may have committed the offenses under investigation,” Shikanda said.
Wycliffe Makasembo, a lawyer for Mackenzie and his wife, who is also detained, said he would appeal against the decision.
“The ruling was not within the law. It violates the constitutional rights of our clients,” Makasembo said.
Mackenzie was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of the murder of two children by starvation and suffocation, but was then released on bail.
Relatives of his adherents say that after he was freed, he returned to Shakahola forest and brought forward his predicted world’s end date — which had previously fallen in August — to April 15.
Mackenzie surrendered to police on April 14 after police first raided the forest where the Good News International Church was based, rescuing 15 people who had been starving themselves.
Kenya court denies bail for alleged death cult leader
https://arab.news/6hhta
Kenya court denies bail for alleged death cult leader
- Paul Mackenzie, leader of the Good News International Church, not yet required to enter a plea after handing himself into police last month
Gordon Brown ‘regrets’ Iraq War support, new biography says
- Former UK PM claims he was ‘misled’ over evidence of WMDs
- Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who resigned in protest over calls for war, had a ‘clearer view’
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown regrets his failure to oppose Tony Blair’s push for war with Iraq, a new biography has said.
Brown told the author of “Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” James Macintyre, that Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who opposed the war, had a “clearer view” than the rest of the government at the time.
Cook quit the Cabinet in 2003 after protesting against the war, claiming that the push to topple Saddam Hussein was based on faulty information over a claimed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
That information served as the fundamental basis for the US-led war but was later discredited following the invasion of Iraq.
Brown, chancellor at the time, publicly supported Blair’s push for war, but now says he was “misled.”
If Brown had joined Cook’s protest at the time, the campaign to avoid British involvement in the war may have succeeded, political observers have since said.
The former prime minister said: “Robin had been in front of us and Robin had a clearer view. He felt very strongly there were no weapons.
“And I did not have that evidence … I was being told that there were these weapons. But I was misled like everybody else.
“And I did ask lots of questions … and I didn’t get the correct answers,” he added.
“Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
