Authorities in the Russian Volga Republic of Mari El opened a criminal case against the local branch of Jehovah's Witnesses for circulating extremist materials, the local investigation department said.
The religious organization, known in the West for persistent door-to-door evangelism, now faces charges of instigating religious hatred in Yoshkar-Ola, the capital of the republic.
More than 30 books, issued and handed out by the organization, have earlier been put on the national list of extremist literature.
"Members of the religious organization handed out literature included into the list of extremist materials and conducted public sermons on the superiority of Jehovah's Witnesses over followers of other religions," investigators said in a statement.
During the investigation, numerous "extremist" religious books and brochures were seized.
"Their contents will be carefully analyzed and studied by experts," the statement reads.
About 90 people are thought to be followers of Jehovah's Witnesses in Mari El.
The Jehovah's Witnesses, which has some seven million followers worldwide and 300,000 in Russia, have already been banned in a number of Russian regions and in some former Soviet republics.
In June similar charges were laid against the group in the southwestern Siberian city of Omsk. Late last year the Russian Supreme Court's judicial chamber for civil cases upheld a regional court ruling to ban the organization's branch in the southern Russian city of Taganrog.
The Jehovah's Witnesses branch in the Russian capital was dissolved by district court ruling in 2004, but the European Court of Human Rights declared the decision illegal this June.
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, August 13 (RIA Novosti)
