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A Siberian cult leader who claims to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ was sentenced to 12 years in a Russian prison camp after his conviction for physically and financially harming his followers.
Sergei Torop, a former traffic policeman known to his followers as “Vissarion,” meaning “he who gives new life,” and two aides used psychological pressure to extract money from his followers and cause serious harm to their mental and physical health, Reuters reported.
Torop, 64, set up the Church of the Last Testament in a remote part of Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk region in 1991, the year the Soviet Union broke up.
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Vissarion, who has proclaimed himself a new Christ, conducts a service during the Holiday of Good Fruit feast in the village of Obitel Rassveta, southeast of Russia’s Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. (Reuters/Ilya Naymushin)
He was one of three men convicted Monday in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. Torop and Vladimir Vedernikov were sentenced to 12 years, and Vadim Redkin was sentenced to 11 years in a maximum-security prison camp.
All three men were arrested in 2020 in a helicopter raid that involved the FSB security service, the successor agency to the Soviet KGB.
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Members of the religious sect led by Vissarion, who has proclaimed himself a new Christ, take part in a procession on the eve of the Holiday of Good Fruit celebration in the Russian village of Petropavlovka. (Reuters/Ilya Naymushin )
A bearded self-styled mystic with long hair, Torop claimed to have been “reborn” to convey the word of God. He attracted thousands of followers, some of whom flocked to live in a settlement known as the “Abode of Dawn” or “Sun City” at a time when Russia was battling poverty and lawlessness, according to Reuters.
He told his followers not to eat meat, smoke, drink alcohol or swear and to stop using money.
Investigators said the men brought “moral harm” to 16 people, damage to the physical health of six people and moderate damage to another person’s health.
Members of the religious sect of Vissarion, who has proclaimed himself a new Christ, take part in the Holiday of Good Fruit feast in Siberia. (Reuters/Ilya Naymushin )
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Vedernikov had also been accused of committing fraud, the RIA state news agency reported.