On Monday, Stephen Mwiti, 48, who said he had lost all six of his youngsters to the cult, welcomed the verdict.

“I’m a happy man, that all persons have been convicted,” he advised the BBC outside courtroom.

His former spouse was one of these convicted of homicide alongside Mackenzie.

Delivering her eight-hour judgment in the port metropolis of Mombasa, Justice Diana Mochache said Mackenzie’s followers believed he was “Jesus’s mouthpiece”.

One of his co-accused advised the courtroom that Mackenzie had said anyone who resisted fasting must be pressured to go to heaven “through kicks and blows”.

Burials in the forest where the cult was primarily based were described as “weddings”, with these who died celebrated as having “wedded with Jesus”, the choose said.

Mackenzie and other cult leaders also face separate circumstances involving terrorism, radicalisation and denying youngsters an training.

The homicide verdict is the first ruling on the most critical prices against the pastor, who was arrested in 2023 after more than 400 our bodies were found in shallow graves in Shakahola forest, close to Kenya’s coast.

He is due to be sentenced on 6 November.

Additional reporting by Thomas Mukhwana