Televangelist Ezekiel Odero will spend his weekend at the Port Police Station until Tuesday when the Shanzu Law Court Principal Magistrate will deliver a ruling on whether to detain him for 30 days pending completion of investigations on deaths at his church.
The office of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) filed a miscellaneous criminal application before Shanzu Law Court Principal Magistrate Joe Omido seeking detention of the suspect for 30 days for the investigation team to complete investigations and submit the file to the DPP for review.
Prosecutor Jami Yamina said that based on credible intelligence there are over 100 deaths that occurred in the precincts of Televangelist Odero between 2022 to 2023 and the potential witnesses are followers or strong believers of the accused.
Odero’s lawyer Jared Magelo in his objection to the application accused the police of being desperate while people lost their lives under their noses.
In his sworn affidavit, the lead investigator George Muriuki said he is undertaking investigations relating to a serious crime that Odero is jointly and by conspiracy suspected to have committed.
Some of the serious crimes being investigated are murder, aiding suicide, abduction, radicalisation, genocide, crimes against humanity, child cruelty, fraud and money laundering and for being accessories before or after the fact.
Investigators will try to piece up crucial evidence after preliminary investigations show the televangelist TV station christened Times TV was purchased for Sh500,000 from Paul Mckenzie who is under investigation over the Shakahola massacre.
The investigator would want to establish whether the deaths reported at the precincts of Televangelist Odera church in Mavueni have a link with dead bodies being exhumed in the 800-acre land in Shakahola or were released to relatives for internment.
The dead bodies, according to the investigator and based on intelligence information, were preserved at a privately run morgue in Kilifi before being transported and interred in the Shakahola Forest.
By Sadik Hassan
