Chief government pathologist Johansen Oduor will today appear before the Senate Adhoc Committee investigating the deaths of over 300 people in Shakahola, Kilifi.
Also to appear before the committee are Lands Cabinet Secretary Zachariah Njeru, CEO of Business Registration Service Kenneth Gathuma and the official Receiver of the Chakama Ranching Co Ltd.
Odour has been leading a team of pathologists in conducting autopsies on bodies exhumed from the Shakahola forest.
The team has completed autopsies for 338 bodies since the exercise began.
In May, post mortem conducted on the bodies exhumed from the Shakahola forest showed that most of the children were strangled to death.
“Out of the autopsies done, an 11-year-old female kid was strangled to death. She had clear marks in the neck and her bones were broken,” Odour said then.
He also said one child had trauma to the head and three of them had asphyxiated (died for lack of oxygen probably due to suffocation).
As of June 27, Oduor said of the 338 post-mortems concluded, 201 were bodies of adults and 117 children. He said they were unable to ascertain the ages of 120 bodies.
Bodies of followers of Pastor Mackenzie’s Goodnews International Ministries have been found in shallow graves in the forest in what is being investigated as mass murder.
Mackenzie has been accused of brainwashing the victims into starving to death on the belief that they would meet Jesus Christ.
