https://en.sputniknews.africa/20230425/a-look-at-worlds-most-notorious-killer-sects-1058837415.html
A Look at World's Most Notorious Killer Sects
A Look at World's Most Notorious Killer Sects
Sputnik Africa
Following the grim discovery in Kenya of the bodies of at least 73 suspected cult members believed to have starved themselves to death, in this article, we take a look at other notorious killer sects.
2023-04-25T11:39+0200
2023-04-25T11:39+0200
2023-04-25T11:39+0200
sub-saharan africa
east africa
kenya
religious cult
religion
exhumation
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Kenyan police have arrested the pastor of a local Christian cult called the Good News International Church, Paul Mackenzie. Mackenzie has long been on the police radar for allegedly preaching a dangerous doctrine that encourages people to starve themselves to death in order to reach heaven.As local authorities discovered at least 73 bodies over the weekend while digging up burial sites in Shakahola forest near the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi, Kilifi county, there are concerns that the number of bodies could be more than initially estimated as each grave can contain more than one body.In one of the most dramatic mass murder-suicides of modern history, 914 adults and children from a US cult died in the jungle of the small South American country of Guyana on November 18, 1978.They were led to their death by a charismatic US preacher, Jim Jones, who coerced members of his Peoples Temple sect into carrying out "revolutionary suicide", urging parents to give their children poison, while others were shot trying to flee or forced to drink the deadly liquid.Jones, who had moved his followers to Guyana from San Francisco to avoid a crackdown on the cult by US authorities, was found dead with a gunshot to the head. It was never determined if he had died by suicide or was shot.Another of the world's worst cult-related massacres took place in Uganda's southwestern Kanungu district in 2000 in which some 700 members from the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God burned to death.Members of the cult, which believed the world would come to an end at the turn of the millennium, had been locked inside a church, with the doors and windows nailed shut from the outside. The building was then set alight.Cult leaders, who were suspected of their deaths, were never found.In 1993, 76 members of a sect in Waco, Texas, including 20 children, died in a blaze at their wooden fortress when it was stormed by federal agents after a 51-day siege.David Koresh, the iconic leader of the Branch Davidian cult – which broke away from the Seventh Day Adventist Church – died along with many of his followers.US authorities had accused the group of stockpiling weapons and obtained an arrest warrant for Koresh and a search warrant for the compound, resulting in the tense weeks-long standoff.The bodies of 48 members of the doomsday Solar Temple sect, including its leaders, were discovered in the Swiss villages of Cheiry and Granges-sur-Salvan in October 1994.In total, over 70 members of the sect founded by a homeopathic healer died, including ten people living in the Canadian province of Quebec and 16 people whose charred bodies were found in the Vercors mountains of southeast France.Notes left by some of the members suggested a mass suicide, but investigators said as many as two thirds of the dead could have been murdered.In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult in San Diego, California, took part in a mass suicide by poisoning to coincide with the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet, considering this a signal for their exit from Earth.The dead included cult co-founder Marshall Applewhite.Bonnie Nettles, the other founder of the sect, which believed that members could transform themselves into immortal extra-terrestrials by rejecting their human nature, died of cancer in 1985.Doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo was behind a notorious attack in Japan in 1995, in which members released toxic sarin gas into Tokyo's subway network, killing 13 people and sickening thousands of others.The chemical was released in liquid form at five locations during rush hour, causing commuters to stagger from trains struggling to breathe.At the cult's headquarters near Mount Fuji, authorities found a plant capable of producing enough sarin to kill millions.Thirteen Aum members, including the cult's leader Shoko Asahara, were executed over the crime.
https://en.sputniknews.africa/20230422/kenyan-police-start-exhuming-32-cult-graves-reports-say-1058786409.html
https://en.sputniknews.africa/20230306/1058787590.html
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A Look at World's Most Notorious Killer Sects
Agence France Presse (AFP)
Kenya's authorities started exhuming remains from dozens of graves in the eastern part of the country on Friday. The graves, located in Shakahola forest, Kilifi county, are believed to contain followers of a Christian cult led by Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who urged his followers to starve to death in order to "meet Jesus."
Kenyan police have arrested the pastor of a local Christian cult called the Good News International Church, Paul Mackenzie. Mackenzie has long been on the police radar for allegedly preaching a dangerous doctrine that encourages people to starve themselves to death in order to reach heaven.
As local authorities discovered at least 73 bodies over the weekend while digging up burial sites in Shakahola forest near the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi, Kilifi county, there are concerns that the number of bodies could be more than
initially estimated as each grave can contain more than one body.
Following the grim discovery in Kenya of the 73 bodies of suspected cult members believed to have starved themselves to death, we take a look at other notorious killer sects.
In one of the most dramatic mass murder-suicides of modern history, 914 adults and children from a US cult
died in the jungle of the small South American country of Guyana on November 18, 1978.
They were led to their death by a charismatic US preacher, Jim Jones, who coerced members of his Peoples Temple sect into carrying out "revolutionary suicide", urging parents to give their children poison, while others were shot trying to flee or forced to drink the deadly liquid.
Jones, who had moved his followers to Guyana from San Francisco to avoid a crackdown on the cult by US authorities, was found dead with a gunshot to the head. It was never determined if he had died by suicide or was shot.
Another of the world's worst cult-related massacres took place in Uganda's southwestern Kanungu district in 2000 in which some 700 members from the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God burned to death.
Members of the cult, which believed the world would come to an end at the turn of the millennium, had been locked inside a church, with the doors and windows nailed shut from the outside. The building
was then set alight.
Cult leaders, who were suspected of their deaths, were never found.
In 1993, 76 members of a sect in Waco, Texas, including 20 children, died in a blaze at their wooden fortress when it was stormed by federal agents after a 51-day siege.
David Koresh, the iconic leader of the Branch Davidian cult – which broke away from the Seventh Day Adventist Church – died along with many of his followers.
US authorities had accused the group of stockpiling weapons and obtained an arrest warrant for Koresh and a search warrant for the compound, resulting in the tense weeks-long standoff.
The bodies of 48 members of the doomsday Solar Temple sect, including its leaders, were discovered in the Swiss villages of Cheiry and Granges-sur-Salvan in October 1994.
In total, over 70 members of the sect
founded by a homeopathic healer died, including ten people living in the Canadian province of Quebec and 16 people whose charred bodies were found in the Vercors mountains of southeast France.
Notes left by some of the members suggested a mass suicide, but investigators said as many as two thirds of the dead could have been murdered.
In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult in San Diego, California, took part in a mass suicide by poisoning to coincide with the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet, considering this a signal for their exit from Earth.
The dead included cult co-founder Marshall Applewhite.
Bonnie Nettles, the other founder of the sect, which believed that members could
transform themselves into immortal extra-terrestrials by rejecting their human nature, died of cancer in 1985.
Doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo was behind a notorious attack in Japan in 1995, in which members released toxic sarin gas into Tokyo's subway network, killing 13 people and sickening thousands of others.
The chemical was released in liquid form at five locations during rush hour, causing commuters to stagger from trains struggling to breathe.
At the cult's headquarters near Mount Fuji, authorities found a plant capable of producing enough sarin to kill millions.
Thirteen Aum members, including the cult's leader Shoko Asahara, were executed over the crime.
