The Krasnoyarsk Regional Court liquidated the Church of the Last Testament, which was founded in the early 1990s by former policeman Sergei Torop. This was reported by the press service of the court.
The regional prosecutor's office filed a lawsuit to liquidate the church a few days after the searches in the settlement of believers in the fall of 2020.
“The basis for the ban on the activities of the Church of the Last Testament” in a judicial proceeding, according to the prosecutor's office, was that the activities of the organization <…> «entails damage to morality, the health of citizens,» the court retells the position of the department.
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 claim, the experts answered a number of questions that there are signs of destructiveness, a desire to destroy the family and psychological violence in the activities of the CHP. As soon as the court received the expertise, the consideration continued rapidly,” they write.
Siege and assault on the City of the Sun. How the security forces prepared and justified the destruction of the Vissarion church
In September 2020, FSB officers searched their community near Lake Tiberkul and took away Torop, who declared himself the incarnation of Jesus Christ and took the name Vissarion, with two close associates by helicopter .
They were accused of creating a religious association, whose activities are associated with violence, and mental disorders that appeared in two followers who left the community (paragraphs “a”, “b” of part 1 of article 239, part 3 of article 111, paragraph “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 submitted for consideration to the Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Novosibirsk. One of the leaders of the community, Vladimir Vedernikov, is also accused of fraud due to spending money on a rural school (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code). class=»mz-publish-context-cite__image» alt=»1″ />Rosleskhoz against the City of the Sun. How the followers of the arrested Vissarion are forced to return the land to the state
Several years before the searches, the security forces came to the community with checks because of complaints about cutting trees when clearing the road and the lack of a diploma from a teacher in a rural school. A month before the searches, employees of REN TV arrived in the community under the guise of tourists and took away their microphone.
Members of the community assumed that the reason for the attack on the Church could be the protests of 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 the Federal Forestry Agency, which went to court, took several plots from them.