Posted on 11/15/2007 3:11:23 PM PST by Stoat
MOSCOW (Reuters) - At least 30 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a remote cave to await the end of the world and are threatening to commit suicide if police intervene, officials and media said on Thursday.
"They have covered the entrance and refuse to come out and are threatening to blow themselves up," an official in the local prosecutor's office told Reuters by telephone. "They threaten to detonate a gas tank and blow themselves up."
The cult members, who include 29 adults and four children, are hidden inside a snow-covered hillside in the Penza region of central Russia. A Penza police spokeswoman said they had moved into the dug-out on November 7.
"No one wants to take on the responsibility of provoking them ... because our information is that there are children among them," said the official.
They are thought to have taken food and fuel supplies in with them and Russian television pictures from the scene showed smoke or steam coming out of a hole in the snow-covered ravine where it was built.
A police patrol was guarding the area to prevent anyone provoking them.
"They are simple Christians," a local priest, Father Georgy, told NTV television station. "They say: 'The church is doing a bad job, the end of the world is coming soon and we are all saving ourselves'."
Media reports said the cult members believed the world would end sometime in May next year. Police expected them to emerge when their supplies ran out.
Many Russians have refused new passports and taxpayers' personal identification numbers, saying the figures contained "satanic" combinations of numbers.
Izvestia newspaper said the leader of the cult, Pyotr Kuznetsov, had been detained by police. It said he was a 43-year-old who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and that in the last few months he had been sleeping in a coffin.
Police took Kuznetsov to the cave to persuade his followers to come out but without success, said the newspaper.
(Reporting by Tatyana Ustinova; writing by Dmitry Solovyov; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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From the article:
"These people have caught the attention of law-enforcement authorities when they began living without passports."
I suppose, then, that law enforcement wouldn't have minded if thirty people with proper passports had gone into a cave with children and had threatened to blow themselves up if disturbed before the Apocalypse.
Communism dies very slowly....the primary concern is not the welfare of the people but in whether or not The State has had an opportunity to properly document them.
Bye then.
Yikes, I pray for the children. Hopefully the Russians will find a peaceful solution. I wonder how Janet Reno is doing these days?
Historically, these sorts of things haven't typically turned out well, have they?
I pray for the children.
That's about all we can do.
I’m reminded of an episode of Mythbusters about a guy trying to flush a raccoon out of a culvert with gasoline.
Sects in caves now, it that what we’re talking about?
LMAO!
The (fevered) imagination races with possibilities......
If you note some of the pictures in previous posts show cops — so, you could call it protected sects.
See, now that’s the right way to promote intelligent design!
Oh lawd....
This story reminds me of a D&D session I once had...
DM: “You enter what looks like a magician’s laboratory. You see a lot of beakers, glass instruments containing other liquids, bunsen burners, etc.”
Gamer 1: “I turn one of the burners off.”
Gamer 2 (who is with Gamer 1, and who is apparently using his brain): “No!!!!”
DM (asking Gamer 1): “You turn a burner off?”
Gamer 1: “Uh, sure.”
DM (talking to Gamers 3-xx): “Okay, this is what you hear: ‘thump, thump, boom—no, wait: BOOM! thump! thump!”
I could have choked him that day...
Sadly, my guess is that the reality of the matter in this case is quite different... "sigh"
LOL!
Uhh ... if they don’t have any hostages ... who cares ?
Well, they're right about that!
Name three "satanic" combinations of numbers.
Well, according to the story update posted at # 21, authorities are involved because the people don't have the correct passports and documentation.
In Russia, it seems that you're not allowed to take children into a cave and blow yourselves up without proper documents.
The SSN? LOL
Cult awaits end of days in cave after leader's arrest - CNN.com
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Members of a Russian doomsday cult barricaded themselves in a cave to wait out the end of the world as the cult's leader underwent psychiatric exams Thursday, Russian media reported.
The cult, which calls itself the "true Russian Orthodox Church," believes the world will end in May.
The cult leader is in police custody awaiting proceedings on charges that he set up an organization "whose activity is associated with violence on citizens and instigation to refuse to perform their civil duties," according to the state-funded Itar-Tass news agency.
Four children are among 29 cult members holed up in a ravine in Russia's Penza region, where they apparently dug a cave.
One of the children in the cave is 18 months old, reported Itar-Tass. Temperatures in the cave are below 54 degrees Fahrenheit (12 degrees Celsius), the Russian news agency reported.
The cult members have refused law enforcement requests to come out or release the children, and they have threatened to commit suicide if police resort to force, according to Russian state television.
The cult, which calls itself the "true Russian Orthodox Church," believes the end of the world will come in May 2008.
Prosecutors announced Thursday they are opening criminal proceedings against the cult's leader, Father Pyotr Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov, 43, is "under the supervision of investigators," Olig Troshin, a Penza prosecutor, told Itar-Tass.
A law enforcement source in Penza told the Russian news agency Interfax that Kuznetsov "is being examined by psychiatrists."
Several clergymen, police officers and agents of the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations are outside the cave.
"It is obviously some kind of insanity," Mitropolitan Kirill, a high-ranking Russian Orthodox Church official, told Russian television. "It is perhaps even a medical case. A very dangerous phenomena is happening in Russia's religious life."
He added, "What we're seeing in Penza right now is a most vivid example of what could happen to a country, to a society, if this society is deprived of proper religious education."
Each morning, our welders used to “flush” rattlesnakes and jackrabbits out of the 30” gas pipeline we were building across NM with acetylene from a cutting torch and a sparking igniter. I’ve seen “smokin’ jacks” tumble over 100 feet across the desert...
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Criminal proceedings opened against Penza sect leader 15.11.2007, 18.30 |
MOSCOW, November 15 (Itar-Tass) - Prosecutors in the Penza region opened criminal proceedings against sect leader Pyotr Kuznetsov whose supporters had holed up in a gully and refuse to talk with authorities. Kuznetsov is "under the supervision of investigators," head of the regional investigations department under the Prosecutor General's Office Oleg Troshin told Itar-Tass. "He's under our supervision; a criminal case has been opened against him under Article 239 of Russias Criminal Code (setting up a religious or public organization whose activity is associated with violence on citizens and instigation to refuse to perform their civil duties," Troshin said. Investigators "haven't ascertained the motives of this move by the sect members who call themselves representatives of "the true Russian Orthodox Church." They refuse contact with the regional authorities or law-enforcers. On the slope of the gully where some 30 sect members, including four children, dug out a cave and barricaded themselves, a detail of police officers has been on round-the-clock watch. Police said the sect is awaiting "doomsday." They have a stock of food, and warned the authorities that in case police made an attempt to force their way inside, they would blow up their tunnels with the gas containers they had stored. The temperature in caves does not exceed 12 degrees Celsius. The youngest child kept by the sect is just 18 months old. Father Pyotr, 43, did not let his followers watch television, listen to the radio, or touch money, prosecutors said. He is to undergo a psychiatric expert examination. The sect leader may be fined 200,000 roubles or sentenced to there years in jail. |
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