A Jehovah’s Witness leader has been charged with inciting religious hatred, local investigators said on Wednesday.

The coordinator of the city’s Jehovah’s Witness church, estimated to have 90 followers, is accused of distributing extremist materials and conducting public sermons on the superiority of their religion over others.

Investigators in the Volga region city of Yoshkar-Ola say a large volume of materials was seized during searches. Experts established that two books and two brochures contain “slogans of an extremist nature,” RIA Novosti reported.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, which has some 7 million followers worldwide and 300,000 in Russia, are banned in a number of Russian regions and in some former Soviet republics.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses branch in Moscow was dissolved by district court ruling in 2004, but the European Court of Human Rights declared the decision illegal last June.

http://www.themoscownews.com/russia/20110518/188675015.html