Shakahola bodies: Postmortem complete for 100 bodies, 11 remaining

Government pathologists on Thursday announced they had completed postmortem for 100 bodies exhumed from Shakahola forest as the exercise entered the fourth day.

So far Chief government pathologist Johansen Oduor said they are left with 11 bodies including one of a follower of the Controversial Preacher Paul Mackenzie who died in hospital after being rescued.

Speaking during the daily briefing at the Malindi Sub County Hospital mortuary, he said out of the 11, eight were being preserved in the Kilifi Sub County hospital Mortuary and had been brought for postmortem to be done.

He said postmortem for the remaining bodies shall be done tomorrow where they will close the exercise and resume the exhumation of bodies in Shakahola.

Oduor said nine families showed up and their DNA taken which brings to 58 the number of families that have so far given their DNAs.

“The total number of postmortems we did were 24 of these postmortems three were children and 21 were adults eight males and 16 females,” he said.

The Pathologist said most of the bodies were severely decomposed adding that most of the starvation is similar to what has been witnessed in the previous postmortems.

Oduor said they found two bodies with head injuries meaning that they died because of injuries on the head.

He said one of the bodies appeared to be of a lady who seemed to have delivered recently and there were what looked like complications of delivery that was bleeding which was seen in the uterus.

“As you remember there were some bodies which were still at Kilifi hospital they were brought here eight of them which we are going to do an autopsy on,” he said.

He said the bodies which were brought from Kilifi are fresh and the process will be completed earlier.

Oduor asked members of the public who are looking for their relatives to visit the Malindi Sub County hospital mortuary at 8 am in the morning so as to be able to see if they could find their loved ones.

“The relatives who intend to identify their relatives should come tomorrow at 8 am so as to identify them,” he said.

However, due to the fact that the majority of bodies are decomposed, he said families should just opt to do DNA instead of going through the 111 bodies and get traumatized yet they will not be able to identify them.

Human Rights organisations however raised concerns about the nature in which the process was going on and asked why they were being kept away.

Mathias Shipeta from Haki Africa said there was a need for them to be part of the postmortem process as they will also be in court to follow up on the case.

Shipeta said he had witnessed over 100 postmortems and dismissed claims by authorities that they would be traumatized if they saw the process.

“Let them allow us to witness the process. If we get traumatized we will heal but it's important for us to witness the process,” he said.

He said as Human rights groups there was no transparency in the process as many people have been left out.

Shipeta said initially they thought they would involve all people but that did not happen and asked the government to ensure the process is conducted in a transparent way.

“We cannot hear 100 people died of starvation, lack of oxygen but we are only hearing from the government,” he said.

He said they have a toll number for families who are looking for their loved ones which is 0755000555.

“They can send photos of those missing and information about those who are missing so as to help in tracing because upto now the government have not given statistics of those missing and those who have been found,” he said.

Victor Kaudo Malindi Social Justice Center Human Rights Activists said a lot of things were not going the right way.

He said on the first day they did 10 postmortems and 30 on the second day while the number has risen more.

Kaudo said they want independent bodies to get access inside so as to know what caused the death of those people.