In June 2023 at the height of revelations about the Shakahola cult massacre, then Interior Cabinet Secretary and now Deputy President Kithure Kindiki indicated the State’s intention to charge the suspects, including preacher Paul Mackenzie, with crimes against humanity under international law.
During a visit to the crime scene in Kilifi County that month, Prof Kindiki told journalists that evidence suggested the crimes met the threshold of international offences.
He said the prosecution would rely on Articles Six and Seven of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which address genocide and crimes against humanity, alongside relevant Kenyan laws.
“For the first time in our country, we will have a prosecution of international crimes by local judicial institutions. Therefore, we are giving effect to laws that have not been tested locally before,” he said at the time.
However, Mackenzie and his co-suspects were initially charged under Kenya’s domestic laws for the Shakahola incident.
It was only last week that the State decided to invoke the Rome Statute in prosecuting cases related to the Kwa Bi Nzaro cult deaths.
The Kwa Bi Nzaro cult, where Mackenzie is also the prime suspect, claimed the lives of 52 people, believed to be remnants of his outlawed Good News International Church.
These victims reportedly survived or narrowly escaped Shakahola where over 450 followers of the church died.
Prosecutors argue that Mackenzie’s teachings and directives continued to inspire actions that led to these deaths, prompting the state to file fresh charges, elevating the accusations to murder classified as crimes against humanity.
This is despite the preacher being held at Shimo La Tewa Maximum Security Prison during the Shakahola trials.
Law Society of Kenya president Charles Kanjama during an interview at his office in Nairobi on February 24, 2026.
Photo credit: Bonface Bogita | Nation Media Group
Mr Charles Kanjama, advocate of the High Court and President of the Law Society of Kenya, explained that such crimes are considered international crimes because they target large groups of people rather than isolated individuals.
“Acts such as murder, torture, rape or enslavement may all fall within crimes against humanity when they occur as part of a systematic or widespread attack against a civilian population, rather than against one or two individuals,” he said.
He added that the crime is not simply against individual victims but constitutes an attack against humanity itself, affecting segments of the population and creating widespread fear or harm.
Prosecutors must demonstrate both the act itself and the intention behind it, that it was not isolated but part of a broader pattern targeting civilians.
“That is the action and the intention. You have to prove the intention, that it was not just to target sporadic people,” he says.
Mr Kanjama noted that sentences for murder under Kenyan law and crimes against humanity under international law are largely similar. However, while murder under the Penal Code can carry the death penalty, Kenya no longer enforces executions, effectively making such sentences life imprisonment.
“In practice, however, Kenya no longer carries out executions. Even if a person is sentenced to death, it effectively becomes life imprisonment,” he explains.
Judges can consider mitigating factors for murder, but such discretion is more limited in international crimes.
“This means courts can consider mitigating factors before deciding the appropriate punishment. In cases of international crimes, if proven, the likelihood of mitigation reducing the penalty is lower,” he adds.
According to advocate Lawrence Obonyo, the move signals that prosecutors consider the alleged acts to be far graver than ordinary crimes. Mr Obonyo has been in the defence team during the Shakahola cases.
“Being charged with crimes against humanity means the prosecution believes the acts are so serious that they fall under the International Crimes Act and the Rome Statute,” he explained.
The Rome Statute, which forms the legal basis of the ICC, recognises four main categories of crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.
Paul Mackenzie at Shanzu Law Courts in Mombasa on November 20, 2023.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Mr Obonyo said invoking crimes against humanity argues that the offences were part of a broader, organised pattern threatening civilian populations.
“The distinction between crimes against humanity and ordinary offences such as murder lies primarily in scale and organisation. While murder may involve the unlawful killing of an individual, crimes against humanity refer to widespread or systematic attacks directed against civilians,” he says.
He highlighted the principle of complementarity, meaning national courts have the primary responsibility to investigate and prosecute international crimes.
“This means that if a Kenyan court lacks the capacity or is unwilling to prosecute such a case, the only option would be to invite the ICC to take over,” he says.
According to Mr Obonyo , proving crimes against humanity requires a high evidentiary threshold. Prosecutors must show that the acts were part of a widespread or systematic attack against civilians, with knowledge of the attack.
“The threshold remains the same, and in fact is even higher. The prosecution must demonstrate that such murders were committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population, with knowledge of that attack,” said Mr Obonyo.
Sentences under the Rome Statute are generally up to 30 years, with life imprisonment in exceptional cases.
In 2011, Kenya's 2007/2008 post-election violence cases involving charges of crimes against humanity were initiated at the ICC. This was done through a request by ICC prosecutors to open an investigation, which was granted by the international court.
However, all the cases were later halted for lack of incriminating evidence. The ICC prosecution blamed this on state interference, lack of cooperation from the government, and the withdrawal and disappearance of key witnesses.
The Rome Statute categorises crimes against humanity into 10 acts: murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer of population, and imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law.
Other acts include torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilisation, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity, persecution against any identifiable group, and enforced disappearance of persons.
In its legal interpretations, the ICC explains that “extermination” includes the intentional infliction of conditions of life, including the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.
Preacher Paul Mackenzie (right) and self-styled priestess Shallyne Anindo Temba when they appeared before the Mombasa High Court on February 11, 2026.
Photo credit: Brian Ocharo | Nation Media Group
It further describes “torture” as the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, upon a person in the custody or under the control of the accused, and “persecution” as the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law.
Mackenzie was charged alongside self-styled priestess Shallyne Anindo Temba, and four others with 23 counts of murder as crimes against humanity for the cult deaths in Kwa Bi Nzaro Forest.
The State concluded that the evidence gathered meets the threshold for crimes against humanity under Kenyan law and the Rome Statute of the ICC, to which Kenya is a signatory.
The suspects are alleged to have committed the offences between January and October 2025 and are charged with murder as crimes against humanity involving the deaths of 23 children.
