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Summary: The discovery of an Islamic sect in Russia, where 70 people including 27 children were discovered living in a catacomb, has led prosecutors to open a child abuse investigation.
[9 August 2012] - Some of the children, including babies aged one, are said to have spent their entire lives underground and never seen daylight. The subterranean sect was discovered by police and security forces in the village of Torfyanoy near Kazan in the republic of Tatarstan, the biggest majority-Muslim region in Russia, 500 miles east of Moscow. Officers were carrying out a routine check of conservative Islamic groups after a twin attack last month in which the moderate Mufti of the republic was injured in a car bomb and his deputy was shot dead. A strict community led by Fayzrakhman Sattarov, 83, a self-claimed "emissary of Allah", had been known to be living at the property for up to a decade, but there had apparently been no reason to suspect wrongdoing. Local media said Mr Sattarov's followers were found in a series of dirty, damp cells on eight different levels underneath a shabby house with a small minaret situated in a yard surrounded by high fences. Television pictures showed women and children emerging from the basement, which had reportedly been enlarged into a rabbit-run of about 30 small chambers. Security officers in helmets who carried out the raid were surrounded by Mr Sattarov and members of the group including women with veiled faces crying, "Allahu akbar!" (God is great!). Only a few members of the sect were allowed to leave the premises to work at a local market, officials said. The children did not go to school and the group refused to visit doctors. At least 19 of the children were taken into care by social services and some of them sent to hospital after the raid last Friday. "Take these children to a bus," a helmeted police officer could be heard shouting in footage from the raid. A number were suffering from anaemia and tuberculosis. Prosecutors said that adult members of the sect were being investigated on suspicion of child abuse. No arrests have yet been made. There were conflicting reports about whether the sect members had lived permanently underground. One local man said he had heard children's voices over the fence but state television claimed some had been kept in the basement and experienced no natural light at all. Ranis Bakhitov, a police spokesman, said: "The children were living in unsanitary conditions, there was no proper ventilation and the rooms were like cells. "Based on the evidence of police officers, all the children require medical attention." Gumar Ganiyev, one of the leaders of the sect, was shown at the gates to the house wearing a long tunic and a loosely-wrapped green turban. He seemed to admit to the misery of the dwelling, telling reporters: "We have three people to every square metre; two and three tier bunks," he said. "We don't go by the rules." Another sect member who spoke briefly to a local reporter said: "They took 21 of our children, sent them off to children's homes. The police came running in with automatics and turned everything upside down. The kids were crying, they didn't want to leave." Mr Sattarov, who is under investigation for his "arbitrariness" in running the compound, has a white beard and wears a white turban. He looked frail in television pictures, leaning heavily on a stick, his hands shaking. The elderly guru worked for official Islamic authorities in the neighbouring region of Bashkortostan during the Soviet period but later split away from Muslims endorsed by Moscow to establish his own isolationist sect. He is said to have once seen the "light of Allah" in sparks emitting from the overhead cable of a trolleybus. In 1996, Sattarov acquired land for an Islamic school and built living quarters on the land where "gradually all the members of the sect moved to live permanently," police said. "Fayzrakhman's supporters lead a closed way of life, not leaving their shelter without extreme necessity," the ministry said. "The children of the commune grew up in the same conditions. They did not go to educational and medical institutions, which is the most severe breach of children's rights." In 2007, the eccentric leader sent an open letter to members of a doomsday cult in the Russian town of Penza, saying: "You have taken the wrong path! We are also waiting for Judgment Day and we know that when it comes only our territory, free from the devil-unbeliever, will stay whole and untouched!" Police said no weapons were found during the raid on the sect's premises in Torfyanoy. Mr Sattarov was earlier known to be opposed by Valiulla Yakupov, the deputy Mufti of Tatarstan who was shot dead outside his home in Kazan, the capital of the region, in mid-July. The chief Mufti, Ildus Faizov, received leg injuries in a car bombing in the centre of the city the same day. Those attacks raised fears that the violent Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus region of Russia is spreading to other regions. Five years ago, Mr Yakupov described Mr Sattarov's sect as a "totalitarian group" whose aim was to take money from its members. "That's where its spirituality ends," he said. Further Information: