Sect in Kenya: bodies of Shakahola victims returned to families

The Kenyan government on Tuesday began handing over 429 bodies of members of a doomsday sect at the center of a court case that has shocked the country.

Bodies exhumed in a vast rural area of ​​coastal Kenya show signs of starvation and strangulation . The cult's leader, Paul Mackenzie , is accused of asking his followers to starve themselves to meet Jesus.

Authorities are using DNA testing to identify the bodies and their families. On Tuesday, the first bodies were handed over to the families. Emotions ran high at the Malindi morgue , as families came to collect their loved ones to rebury them. Some groaned, overwhelmed.

Mackenzie and dozens of his associates were indicted in February for the torture and murder of 191 children. The trial opens on April 23. Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said Mackenzie's Good News International Ministries was an organized crime group .

Mackenzie is serving a separate one-year prison sentence after being convicted of operating a movie studio and producing films without a valid license.

Some outraged Kenyans asked how authorities could have failed to notice warning signs of the ongoing mass deaths .

Last week, the Kenyan Human Rights Commission said police failed to act on reports that could have prevented deaths in the remote Shakahola region. Several reports had been lodged at police stations by people whose relatives had entered the forest area.