By Emmanuel Igunza, The Related Press
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The chief of a doomsday cult in Kenya was sentenced Dec. 1 to 18 months in jail for the unlawful distribution of movies and working a movie studio with out licenses.
The senior Justice of the Peace within the metropolis of Malindi, Olga Onalo, handed down the sentence for Paul Mackenzie. The controversial preacher can attraction inside 14 days.
Mackenzie was discovered responsible final month of exhibition of movies by his Occasions Tv community with out approval of the Kenya Movie Classification Board in expenses relationship again to 2019.
He pleaded not responsible to the costs saying he didn’t know he required a license to distribute movies.
Mackenzie had been accused of utilizing the TV channel and his sermons to radicalize youngsters and oldsters towards Western training and drugs. Prosecutors additionally alleged that a few of his followers had refused to go to highschool or attend hospitals when sick. He was acquitted of these expenses.
The preacher has been in police custody since April, when he was arrested in reference to the invention of greater than 400 our bodies in mass graves on his church property. He has not been formally charged within the deaths.
Prosecutors allege Mackenzie ordered a whole bunch of his congregants to starve themselves to loss of life with a purpose to meet Jesus.
The state final month utilized to proceed holding Mackenzie and his co-accused in custody for six extra months, as investigations proceed. Contemporary graves have been found in November at his 800-acre (324-hectare) property, however authorities haven’t revealed when exhumation of the our bodies will likely be completed, with a lot of pastor Mackenzie’s followers nonetheless reported lacking.
