President Ruto has apologized to Kenyans for the Shakahola Forest massacre, highlighting the negligence of some government agencies and promising that those responsible will be held to account, as cited by local media.
His apologies come as the number of deaths linked to a religious cult that practiced starvation near the coastal town of Malindi, south-eastern Kenya, reached 201. According to a local news outlet, more than 600 people remain missing in the area.
"I am taking responsibility that, as President, these [Shakahola murders] should not have happened. The promise I am giving to Kenyans is that we will get to the bottom of this matter," the president was quoted as saying.
Ruto suggested that several government bodies could have neglected their duties, accusing the National Intelligence Service, National Police Service, Directorate of Criminal Investigations, area chiefs and other officials of failing to detect and prevent the cult’s activities on time.
He pledged that these agencies and individuals will take responsibility for what happened, as this kind of activity should never have occurred in a country where all the agencies are in place and supposed to nip these things in the bud.
"Some people who are responsible for this failure on the part of the government will have to give an account. This kind of thing should have never happened when we had all the relative agencies. But it has happened, and we have taken full responsibility," President Ruto said.
The Kenyan leader emphasized that the blame for how far cult leader Paul Mackenzie managed to get with his atrocities lies with the government and its agencies. The cult, known as the Good News International Church, was headed by former taxi driver Paul Mackenzie. He allegedly prophesied the end of the world and gave his followers the command to commit suicide to be the first to enter paradise.
"[Mackenzie] and his accomplices were arrested and taken to court more than once [and then] released, which is when he decided it was necessary to carry on with his criminal activities in the name of religion. This person is a terrorist," Ruto stressed.
Ruto noted that the commission of inquiry, formed "to help unravel how all these things started, why they happened the way they did, and who Mackenzie's accomplices are," will get to the bottom of the issues and make sure that those responsible are seized.
He assured Kenyans of his commitment to tackling the matter, adding that he will visit Malindi once the multi-agency team that is on the ground at present completes its forensic analysis.
Cult leader Mackenzie was arrested on 14 April, accused of starving his followers to death, and is now in police custody facing terrorism charges.
Post mortems on corpses found in mass graves linked to the religious cult indicated that starvation was the main cause of death, but some of the victims, including children, were strangled, beaten, or suffocated. Moreover, the examinations revealed missing organs, raising suspicions of forced harvesting. Most of the deceased were children and women.
Mackenzie himself, according to Katana, planned to live to help lead the cult members to "meet Jesus" through starvation. However, once this goal was achieved, he would also starve himself to death ahead of what he said was the end of the world.