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Muslim sect in Russia kept 27 kids underground for 10 years

Posted On Friday, August 10, 2012 at 08:52:48 AM

Members of the sect stand at the gate of a house in Kazan
Russian prosecutors have brought child abuse charges against members of a reclusive Muslim sect accused of keeping some of their children in underground cells for over 10 years.

Russia's Vesti television reported Wednesday that prosecutors in Kazan, the capital of the predominantly Muslim central province of Tatarstan, have also charged Faizrakhman Satarov, the sect's 83-year-old founder, with negligence.
 
It said Satarov declared himself a prophet — a claim that contradicts the principles of Islam — and ordered some 70 of his followers to break contact with the outside world and live in underground cells they dug under a house outside Kazan in early 2000s.

A former top imam in Bashkortostan, Satarov had a vision from God: He would build an Islamic caliphate under the earth. The digging began and 70 followers soon moved into an 8-story honeycomb of cramped cells with no light, heating or ventilation. It was built under the decrepit three-story brick house topped by a small minaret with a tin crescent moon, on a 700- square-metre plot.

A few sect members worked as traders at a local market. Children were born. They, too, lived in the cold underground cells, until authorities raided the compound last week and freed 27 of them. Aged between 1 and 17, the children had never left the property. Their parents were charged with child abuse.

No members of the sect, who call themselves "muammin" after the Arabic term that means "believers," have been arrested, said Irina Petrova, deputy prosecutor.
The children were discovered when police searched the sect grounds as part of an investigation into the recent killing of a top Tatarstan Muslim cleric. The children were examined and will temporarily live in an orphanage.







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