Islamic sect members freed after decade underground

Scores of adherents living in an an underground bunker without heat or sunlight for nearly a decade have been discovered living on the outskirts of the city of Kazan in western Russia, local media have reported.

Sect members included 15 children, the youngest of whom had just turned 18 months. Many of them were born underground and had never seen daylight until the prosecutors discovered their dwelling on 1 August and sent them for health checks.

A 17-year-old girl turned out to be pregnant.

Police investigator Ranis Bakhitov said: “The children are living in unsanitary conditions. There is a lack of ventilation. The premises are like monks’ cells”.

“Based on the evidence of police officers, all the children require medical attention. During the search we found that the building was two-storey. Below it was a cellar where we found people were living,” said Bakhitov in a video released by the local interior ministry.

“The space was built as a labyrinth. There are rooms measuring two by three metres,” (six feet by 10), he said.

The police said they had established that around 60 people were living in the underground quarters.

Catacombs

The group, known as the “Fayzarahmanist” sect, was named after its 83-year-old organiser Fayzrahman Satarov, who declared himself a prophet and his house an independent Islamic state, according to a report by state TV channel Vesti.

Satarov was described as a former deputy to a Sunni Islamic cleric in the 1970s. His followers were encouraged to read his manuscripts and most were banned from leaving their eight-storey underground bunker which had been dug in the basement of a building, Vesti said.

The Kazan prosecutor Ildus Nafikov told reporters: “The prosecutor has the right to file a complaint to the court to prohibit an organisation’s activities. Plus, in parallel, we will make a request, we will turn to the court to get permission to demolish all these illegal constructions like catacombs and so on.”

Before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, religion had been suppressed in the country, prompting the emergence of a variety of cults and sects.

End of the world

In November 2007, a “doomsday” cult calling itself the True Russian Orthodox church was uncovered barricaded in a cave in southern Russia. The group’s members said they were waiting for the end of the world, which they said would happen the following May.

The 30-strong group, which included four young children, had armed itself with gas canisters and sealed itself into the cave in a forest in the Penza region.

Its leader was a former engineer, Pyotr Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov had apparently fallen out with the Russian Orthodox church. Reports said he ordered his followers into the cave but did not join them.