By Dan Grennan
A cult leader who claims to be the reincarnation of Jesus has been jailed for mentally and physically abusing his followers. Sergei Torop, 64, lost his job as a traffic officer and founded the Church of the Last Testament in 1991 after experiencing a “divine revelation”. Thousands of followers fell under the spiritual leader’s spell and lived in remote settlements across Siberia, including a core group of 300 at an isolated mountain-top called the “Abode of Dawn”. On Monday, Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office accused Torop – who calls himself “Vissarion” – and two associates were found guilty of “creating a religious a religious organization that violated the civil rights of its members and caused bodily harm”, reports the Moscow Times . Torop was accused of using psychological manipulation to control and exploit followers for labour and money between 1991 and 2020. The actions of ‘Siberia’s Jesus’ were said to have caused 16 people “moral harm”, left six with “serious health problems” and one with “moderate” harm. The cult leader was arrested in a helicopter raid on his Krasnoyarsk region commune in 2020. He was sentenced to 12 years in jail and his associates Vadim Redkin and Vladimir Vedyornikov were jailed for 11 and 12 years respectively. All three men denied the charges and it is not clear if they plan to appeal their sentences. The victims and state prosecutors were awarded 45 million rubles ($572,000) in damages. Torop’s cult grew in the ideological vacuum left in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in the 1990s. The cult become more isolated in the Covid-19 pandemic and shut their doors to outsiders. After losing his job as a traffic officer in 1990, Torop claimed to have been reborn as Vissarion – meaning “he who gives new life” – and Jesus Christ at the same time. His belief system does not make him God but does make him the “word of God”. The cult’s spiritual outlook combines elements of the Russian Orthodox Church with Buddhism apocalypticism, collectivism, and ecological values. He founded the Last Testament just before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and regularly predicts the end of the world with only his followers set to be saved. Followers must follow strict rules including, abstaining from meat, smoking, drinking alcohol, swearing and the use of money. Torop replaced Christmas with a feast day on his birthday, January 14, and claimed to posses the power to heal AIDS and cancer with only the touch of his hand. For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters .