Gov’t appeals for DNA samples of Shakahola victims’ relatives

The government has urged family members of those who died in the 2023 Shakahola forest massacre in Kilifi County to present DNA samples for expedition of the identification exercise.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen made the appeal on Wednesday when he visited Kilifi to meet the region’s administrators and check on the probe’s progress.

In the ongoing manslaughter case, Paul Mackenzie of the Good News International Church is accused of ordering his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so that they could go to heaven. 

Out of the 453 bodies retrieved from the shallow graves in the forest, the government has tested 333 samples, but an even smaller number have been matched to their relatives.

DNA testing and victim identification has dragged on for years, partly because of what the government has said are the varying states of decomposition the victims’ remains were exhumed at.

Additionally, the Office of the Government Chemist has said that samples from relatives of the deceased who have complied with its directive to provide samples for possible matching with those of the victims are still insufficient.

The process has further been delayed by what the chemist said is a key polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test not available in the country and whose outsourcing is prohibitively high.

Even so, Murkomen on Wednesday accused the judiciary of slowing the process.

“The courts are dragging the hearings. We want this matter expedited,” the CS said, while admitting the government’s failure over the massacre.

“We must own up as a government that this was a failure of monumental level. Who was collecting and receiving intelligence?”

Murkomen said the government will make a memorial site for the massacre “to remind us about our failures regarding extremism.”

Mackenzie is in police custody and has been charged with terrorism with 94 co-defendants.

The 55 men and 40 women also face charges of murder, manslaughter, as well as child torture and cruelty in separate cases. They deny any wrongdoing.