KILIFI Kenya, April 27 -The Judiciary on Thursday April 27 shared the status of cases involving the controversial pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie that are or have been before court.
The pastor and his co-accused persons have a court history dating back to March 2017.
Detectives continue to exhume the bodies from the vast Shakahola forest. By Thursday evening the body count had reached 109, with more expected to be discovered as the exhumation goes on.
In the 2017 case, Mackenzie and two other suspects were jointly charged with the offence of offering basic education in an unregistered institution.
They however later entered a plea bargain with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution (ODPP) and were discharged by the trial court and ordered to be of good behavior.
The pastor was later arraigned on October 17, 2017 on four counts including radicalization and failing to take his children to school. He pleaded not guilty and was on October 29, 2021 acquitted.
Later, on April 11, 2019, the controversial pastor was charged again in court. He was accused of incitement to disobedience of law and being in possession of and distributing films to the public which had not been examined by the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB).
The matter is coming up for defence hearing on June 26 this year, according to the Judiciary.
He was also mentioned in five separate miscellaneous criminal applications. In 2017, Mackenzie and 20 others were held for seven days on grounds that they were to carry out investigations for radicalization of children after they were found with 73 children in church.
Mackenzie was mentioned in five separate miscellaneous criminal applications. One in 2017 saw him and 20 others held for seven days on grounds that they were to carry out investigations for radicalization of children after they were found with 73 children in a church.
The Judiciary further said that four other applications emanated from the ongoing Shakahola investigations.
One of them connected him to the murder of two children, but the application was later dismissed for lack of merit.
The other applications were for the exhumation of remains of 14 unknown bodies while another application allowed for the exhumation of the bodies at the 800-acre Shakahola land.
His church, the Good News International Church, was also involved in a child protection and care matter in October 2017 as well as a criminal case in March 2019.
There was also a criminal application involving three individuals that was heard on Thursday.
The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) has started probing judicial officers who handled the pastor’s cases to establish whether there was any misconduct.
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