Russia bans Jehovah’s Witnesses as ‘extremist’

MOSCOW: Russia’s Supreme Court issued a ruling Thursday banning Jehovah’s Witnesses and seizing their property after the justice ministry called on it to dissolve the Christian group as an “extremist organization.”

Supreme Court judge Yury Ivanenko said Russia had decided to close down “the administrative center of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the local organizations in its fold and turn their property over to Russia.”