Nairobi — Kilifi Governor Gideon Mung'aro now says controversial Pastor Paul Mackenzie is not the owner of the 800-acre plot of land in Shakahola forest Kilifi where decomposing bodies of his followers who starved o death were recovered.
Speaking on Citizen Television on Tuesday, Mung'aro said the land was part of the third phase of the Chakama Settlement Scheme which he claimed had been grabbed by shady individuals.
"That land which Mackenzie is occupying is not his; we have three schemes in that area which were initially grabbed by some individuals from the Chakama ranchers," he said.
"When I was Malindi MP, we managed to recover phase 1 which is about 52,000 acres. We recovered phase 2 around five years ago. The area he (Makenzie) is occupying is Chakama 3 which is currently being contested by people who grabbed it."
The governor admitted that had Mackenzie chosen to dwell in a more populous region of the Shakahola forest, his evil schemes might have been discovered earlier.
Additionally, the governor added that the Kilifi County government is not to be blame for the killings in Shakahola forest since security agents are under the national government.
"Security issues are not under the country but rather security apparatuses. Only they can help us unravel such cases. We did not know that all this was going on," he said.
"The national government should be held responsible not the county government. The accountability should be asked to the security teams. We have intelligence on the ground the chiefs, the assistant chiefs who are not under county government and all of them were saying we did not even know ourselves."
Investigators on Tuesday exhumed 10 more bodies from mass graves linked to a starvation cult, bringing the total number of victims to 83.
The 10 bodies recovered in the Shakahola included three children, as fatalities mount in connection to the cult led by Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who urged his followers to starve to death in order to find God.
Multi-agency security team has discovered shallow graves on the 800-acre parcel of land that is believed to be owned by the controversial pastor of Good News International Church.
The grim discovery has shocked the nation and President William Ruto has pledged a crackdown on "unacceptable" religious movements as horrifying details unfold by the day.
Visiting the site on Tuesday, Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki warned that worse could still come.
"We don't know how many more graves, how many more bodies, we are likely to discover," he told reporters, adding the crimes were serious enough to warrant terrorism charges against Nthenge.
He said 34 people had been found alive so far in the vast forest, where police were tipped off about the cult's activities and a crime scene has been established.
"The majority of the bodies exhumed are children," a forensic investigator told AFP on condition of anonymity.
As the fatalities mounted, authorities at the state-run Malindi Sub-County Hospital warned that the morgue was running out of space to store the bodies and already operating well over capacity.
"The hospital mortuary has a capacity of 40 bodies," said the hospital's administrator Said Ali, adding that officials had reached out to the Kenya Red Cross for refrigerated containers.
It is believed that some followers of the Good News International Church could still be hiding in the bush around Shakahola and at risk of death if not quickly found.
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Hussein Khalid, executive director of the rights group Haki Africa that tipped off the police, urged the authorities to send more rescuers to scour the 325-hectare (800-acre) area of woodland for survivors.
"Each day that passes by there is very high possibility that more are dying," he told AFP, saying 50 to 60 percent of the victims were children.
"The horror that we have seen over the last four days is traumatising. Nothing prepares you for shallow mass graves of children."
Nthenge was arrested again last month, according to local media, after two children starved to death in the custody of their parents.
He was released on bail of 100,000 Kenyan shillings ($700) before surrendering to police following the Shakahola raid.
Nthenge is due to appear in court on May 2.
