Sect accused of keeping 27 children in dungeon

A RUSSIAN sect trying to avoid contact with the outside world kept 27 children in dank cells, many for more than a decade, prosecutors said yesterday.

Some of the children, aged one to 17, have never seen daylight, health officials said.

The children have been now freed and their parents charged with child abuse.

The sect’s founder Faizrakhman Satarov, 83, who declared himself a Muslim prophet, has also been charged with negligence, prosecutors said.

Members of the sect call themselves “muammin” after the Arabic term that means “believers” .

The children were discovered last week when police searched the sect’s grounds as part of a probe into the recent killing of a top Tatarstan Muslim cleric, an attack local officials blamed on Islamist groups that have mushroomed in the Volga River province.

Satarov, a former top imam in the neighbouring province of Bashkortostan, declared his house outside Kazan an independent Islamic state. He ordered some 70 followers to live in cells they dug under the three-storey building topped by a small minaret with a tin crescent moon.

Only a few members were allowed to leave the premises to work as traders at a local market, Russian media said.

The children have been placed in local hospitals for observation and will temporarily live in an orphanage, paediatrician Tatyana Moroz said in televised remarks.

The cramped cells, without ventilation, heating or electricity, form eight levels under a decrepit brick house on a 700-square-metre plot of land. The house was built illegally and will be demolished, Tatarstan police told local media.