A rebellious Russian monk who rebuked the Kremlin and denied the coronavirus existed was convicted on Tuesday of abetting suicide and sentenced to 3 and a half years in jail.
The monk, Father Sergi, was arrested in December 2020 on prices of inciting suicidal acts by way of a sermon urging believers to “die for Russia”, breaching freedom of conscience and making arbitrary strikes . He dismissed the fees and his attorneys mentioned they might enchantment Tuesday’s determination by Moscow’s Izmailovo District Court.
Father Sergi responded to the decision with the biblical “Judge not and you will not be judged.”
When the coronavirus pandemic started, the 66-year-old monk denied its existence and denounced authorities efforts to comprise the epidemic as an “electronic camp of the devil.” He has unfold long-discredited conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and coronavirus vaccines being developed towards COVID-19 as a part of an alleged international conspiracy to manage the general public by way of microchips. has been described.
The monk urged followers to defy the federal government’s lockdown measures and took refuge in a monastery close to Yekaterinburg, which he based and dozens of volunteers, together with veterans of the separatist battle in japanese Ukraine, helped implement his guidelines. whereas the priest and a number of other nuns had left.
The monk punished President Vladimir Putin as a “traitor to the homeland” serving a satanic “world government” and denounced the pinnacle of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, and different prime clerics as “heretics”. who “should be thrown out”.
The Russian Orthodox Church stripped Father Sergi of his abbot and later excommunicated him for breaking monastic guidelines, however he overruled the choices and ignored police investigators’ summons. Faced with stiff resistance from tons of of his supporters, church officers and native authorities appeared reluctant to evict him for months.
Father Sergi, who was born as Nikolai Romanov, served as a police officer throughout Soviet occasions. After leaving the ranks of regulation enforcement, he was convicted of homicide, theft and assault and sentenced to 13 years in jail. He enrolled in a church college after his launch and later turned a monk.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
