A self-styled mystic Vissarion and two aides were sentenced to prison for using psychological pressure to extract money and harm followers in Siberia. The Siberian cult leader, known as Vissarion, claims to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, was sentenced to 12 years in a Russian prison camp following a 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.
The three men were 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.
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. Vedernikov had also been accused of committing fraud, the RIA state news agency reported.
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