MOSCOW, November 24 (RAPSI) – Several alleged organizers and members of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religious organization banned in Russia, were arrested in Moscow on Tuesday, the Investigative Committee’s press service reports.

According to investigators, from June 2019 the group created a cell of the banned organization in northeastern Moscow. Secret gatherings were held in a flat where the doctrine’s followers in particular read religious literature propagating the Jehovah’s Witnesses ideas. It was also found that the cell’s members recruited new members to the organization.

In April 2017, the Supreme Court of Russia ordered liquidation of the Jehovah's Witnesses managing organization and all its 395 local branches. In August, the Administrative Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses was added to the list of banned extremist organizations.

Jehovah’s Witnesses religious organization has had many legal problems in Russia. Since 2009, 95 materials distributed by the organization in the country have been declared extremist and 8 Jehovah's Witnesses’ branches have been liquidated, according to the Justice Ministry.

Jehovah's Witnesses is an international religious organization based in Brooklyn, New York. Since 2004 several branches and chapters of the organization were banned and shut down in various regions of Russia.