Court orders exhumation of bodies linked to cult

A Kenyan court has ordered the exhumation of bodies suspected to belong to people who were starved and suffocated in the same county where hundreds of members of a doomsday cult were found dead two years ago, prosecutors said on Wednesday. According to the Straits Times, the bodies in the new case are believed to be buried in shallow graves on the outskirts of Malindi in southeastern Kenya's Kilifi County. Eleven suspects are being investigated, Kenya's Office of the DPP said on X. ‘Investigators suspect multiple individuals were murdered through starvation and suffocation,’ it said. More than 400 bodies were exhumed from the nearby Shakahola Forest in 2023 in one of the world's worst cult-related disasters in recent history. In that case, prosecutors have alleged that cult leader Paul Mackenzie ordered his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so that they could go to heaven before the world ended. Mackenzie, who faces charges of murder and terrorism, denies the accusations against him.