Forensic experts in Kenya on Monday commenced autopsies of over hundred corpses exhumed from mass graves linked to a pastor alleged to have mandated his members to starve to death to see Jesus.
“Officially the process of post-mortem of the bodies starts immediately,” Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki told reporters outside a hospital morgue in the coastal town of Malindi.
“We are here to witness a very critical stage,” he said. “That process is expected to take roughly a week, all going well.”
Investigators will also take DNA samples to help identification, though the full results may take months, the chief government pathologist, Johansen Oduor, said.
Mass graves in Shakahola forest indicates scores of deaths, including children.
The death toll of 109 includes a small number of people who were found alive but died on their way to hospital.
“The process of exhumation was temporarily stopped because the experts advised us (that) when it is raining, that process cannot continue,” Kindiki said.
Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, a former taxi driver who created a Christian-based cult called the Good News International Church, is accused of telling followers that starvation offered a path to God.
But Kindiki said Friday that preliminary reports suggested “that some of the victims may not have died of starvation. There were other methods used, including hurting them.”
Ezekiel Odero, the flamboyant head of the New Life Prayer Centre and Church, who was arrested on Thursday, is suspected of crimes including murder, aiding suicide, abduction, radicalisation, crimes against humanity, child cruelty, fraud and money laundering.
Prosecutor Peter Kiprop said last week that there was “credible information” linking the bodies found in the forest to the deaths of several “innocent and vulnerable followers” of Odero.
Odero and Nthenge share a “history of business investments” including a television station that was used to pass “radicalised messages” to followers, Kiprop said in court documents.
