Cult leader Paul Mackenzie has been sentenced to a total of 200 years in prison for the murder of 190 children and one adult in the Shakahola Forest, on the Kenyan coast, between January 2021 and September 2023.

The High Court in Mombasa imposed two separate 100-year prison terms on Mackenzie, distinguishing between victims who died through starvation and those who were directly killed through suffocation, strangulation or blunt force trauma.

The sentences will run consecutively.

Justice Diana Mochache also sentenced his 29 other co-accused to between 100 to 160 years' imprisonment for the same offences.

The court found Mackenzie and his accomplices guilty of murder on 19 October over the deaths of members of his Good News International Church, who starved themselves on Mackenzie's instruction in the belief it would take them to heaven before the world ended.

In harrowing remarks as she handed down the sentences, the judge asked those in court to think about the unimaginable suffering of the youngest of Mackenzie's victims.

"Consider the infant... A child, a tiny life, just 12 brief days upon the earth, denied the mother's milk from the moment of its birth, with a raw and unhealed umbilical cord still clinging to its frame, left to shrivel in the heat," she said.

"Twelve days of weak, failing cries until the quiet final breath, a new born child delivered in the scorched dry land, straight from labour into agonising death.

"Consider the 161 toddlers and young children under the age of 10 slowly wasted in the dirt by the merciless command of a man, their small lips cracked, their stomachs hollow, crying out for food and water in vain, enduring days of lingering, intolerable, agonising pain, searching for comfort in the eyes that offered only a cold command."

"The sentences of this court must match the darkness of their deeds, the maximum penalty of the law," she added.

"Stripping them of liberty, confinement for life, removes forever from the light of human grace, a permanent sentence for the horrific crimes committed against the most defenceless of the human race."

She said the defendants showed no remorse.

"Yet before this court, not tears of sorrow fall, the perpetrators stand with unbent necks, devoid of guilt, unbothered by remorse, declaring in their blind and arrogant zeal that their children are in heaven and they are ready to follow," she said.

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Reading from a report compiled by a probation officer, Justice Mochache said Mackenzie continues to be the "ideological influence behind the movement".

She added: "Of particular concern is his continued adherence to the beliefs associated with the office."

She said he denied responsibility for the deaths and blamed the government, without expressing remorse or empathy for the victims and their families.

The probation officer assessed him as presenting a high risk of reoffending.

MacKenzie's defence team said he intends to appeal the sentences.

Mackenzie also faces charges of terrorism-related crimes, manslaughter and torture. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

In January this year, he was further charged with the murder of another 52 people found dead at a nearby village.

He also pleaded not guilty in that case.

The 191 victims were among more than 400 people whose deaths were linked to the church.

Mackenzie was arrested in April 2023, after a rights group tipped off authorities and some followers were rescued.

There have been calls in Kenya for tougher regulations on religious organisations after it emerged that Mackenzie had been arrested twice in the past but released.

(c) Sky News 2026: Kenyan doomsday cult leader jailed for 200 years over murder of 191 people