‘Jesus of Siberia’ sect leader jailed for 12 years
A Russian sect leader claiming that Jesus Christ was reincarne was sentenced to imprisonment in a 12 -year prison camp after being sentenced to damaging the health and financial affairs of his followers.
Sergei Torop, a former traffic police known as “Vissarion” by his followers, founded the last Testament Church in a remote but Pitoresque part of the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia in 1991, when the Soviet Union was separated.
A long -haired bearded mystical style, mystical, claimed that God was “reborn” to convey the word of God, and some attracted thousands of followers to live in a settlement known as “Settlement of Dawn” or “Sun City” at a time when Russia struggled with poverty and lawlessness.
64 -year -old Torop, when they looked at the housing of the big hill, not eating meat, not smoking, not to drink alcohol or swear and quitting money in the honor of regularly toned in honor of his followers said.
However, the investigation committee, which was equivalent to Russia’s US FBI, accused Torop and two assistants of using psychological pressure to remove money from their followers and serious harm to their mental and physical health.
In a statement on Monday, a court in Novosibirsk, the city of Siberia, said that he condemned three men, and that he sentenced Torop and Vladimir Vedernikov to 12 years and Vadim Redkin at the maximum security prison camp.
In addition, 40 million rubles ($ A782,000) were ordered to compensate for their victims for “moral damage”.
All three refused to do wrong.
Torop and two aids were arrested in 2020 by a helicopter containing the FSB Security Service, the successor agency of the Soviet KGB, in a raid of a security forces.
According to the RIA State News Agency, researchers said that men caused “moral damage” to 16 people, that six people caused serious damage to their physical health and that another person causes moderate damage to the health of another person.
Ria said one of the assistants, Vedernikov, was also accused of fraud.
In the 2017 BBC documentary, filmmaker Simon Reeve interviewed Torop, who refused to do any wrong.
The film showed how school girls with their parents are educated as what a local teacher calls “brides future for valuable men”.
