The court liquidated the Krasnoyarsk “Church of the Last Testament”; the former policeman who founded it has been in jail for more than two years

The Krasnoyarsk regional court liquidated the “Church of the Last Testament,” which was founded by former policeman Sergei Torop in the early 1990s. this . reported The press service of the court

a lawsuit to liquidate the church The regional prosecutor's office filed a few days after searches in the believers' settlement in the fall of 2020.

“The basis for banning the activities of the “Church of the Last Testament” in court, according to the prosecutor’s office, was that the activities of the organization <…> “involve damage to the morality and health of citizens,” the court recounts the department’s position.

The defense of believers notes that the basis of the position of the prosecutor's office was an examination from the Siberian Federal University.

“Despite the fact that the examination was largely not in favor of the prosecutor’s office’s claim, the experts answered a number of questions that the activities of the Center for Prosecutor General’s Office showed signs of destructiveness, a desire to destroy the family and psychological violence. As soon as the court received the examination, the review continued rapidly,” they write.

In September 2020, FSB officers came to search their community near Lake Tiberkul and took away Torop, who declared himself the incarnation of Jesus Christ and took the name Vissarion, with two associates by helicopter.

They were accused of creating a religious association, the activities of which involved violence, and mental disorders that appeared in two followers who left the community (points “a”, “b” of Part 1 of Article 239, Part 3 of Article 111, Point “d” of Part 2 of Article 112 UK). The number of victims soon increased to 21 .

At the end of August 2022, the case was transferred for consideration to the Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Novosibirsk. One of the community leaders, Vladimir Vedernikov, is also accused of fraud for spending money on a rural school (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code).

For several years before the searches, security forces came to check the community because of complaints about the cutting of trees when clearing the road and the lack of a diploma from a teacher in a rural school. A month before the searches, REN TV employees came to the community under the guise of tourists, and their microphone was taken away .

Community members assumed that the reason for the attack on the Church could have been protests by local residents against the construction of a road to the Ak-Sug copper deposit and gold mining in the upper reaches of the Kazyr River, on the banks of which there are settlements of believers. After the searches, the regional Ministry of Forestry and Rosleskhoz, which went to court, took away several plots from them.