KURSK, March 14 - RAPSI. The Kursk Regional Court has started considering the prosecutor's office petition to declare five Jehovah's Witnesses religious leaflets extremist, the court spokesman Albert Aseyev told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

"The leaflets speak about general and spiritual issues. For example, one is titled How to prepare for death," Aseyev said.

He added that the court will now hear the witnesses to find out if the people who distributed the leaflets are members of Jehovah's Witnesses. The court is also expected to authorize examinations to define their possible extremist nature.

Jehovah's Witnesses is an international religious organization. Many traditional religions consider it to be a pseudo-Christian sect. Its management center in Russia is in St. Petersburg. Its activities are forbidden in China, North Korea, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and a number of other countries.

According to the organization, it comprises about 7 million people as of August 2009.

In June 2010, the European Court of Human Rights declared illegal the Russian court's decision to dissolve the religious community of Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow and ordered Russia to pay 70,000 euro in compensation.